BPM's still in question

Jesus Christ, it only took 3 pages for someone to take the time to put the troll down. BPM has almost nothing to do with percussive transients, but with the overall speed of a 1/1 cycle in virtually any element of the song. A half time 140 song is still 140, it just has a few missing steps in the percussion sequencing. Spacing out the percussion steps and keeping the BPM at 140 is much easier than compressing the sequence, metering at 70 BPM, and doubling the rates and time divisions for every single other thing in your project.

There may be 70 percussion transients a minute in a dubstep track, but literally every other element of the song keeps tempo and time divides based off of a 140 clock. This is why BPM counters get so tripped up by certain half-time tracks, they analyse a variety of elements, but if the percussion dominates, it can get confused.

Let's say you're 75% into your set and are building up the energy with uptempo songs (140 BPM), and then you drop a 70 BPM song that's been mislabeled as 140 BPM. That's just going to kill the energy buildup you've worked for, and will likely throw the crowd off. Of course, a proper DJ will know his/her tracks inside out and know not to drop that 70 BPM song no matter what the BPM says, but I am just trying to illustrate that BPM is more than mathematics.

i get what you are trying to say but i completely disagree that the vibe/energy is often determined by bpms. i have hundreds of house tracks that are 125 bpms and they run the entire gambit from extremely mellow to smash your face in; all done in various types of moods. bpms have almost nothing to do with vibe or how mellow something is.

Tempo and energy have virtually nothing to do with each other in music production. I have multiple "downtempo" 100-110 BPM tracks that have far more smash than many 170-175 DnB tracks. Tagging a half-step 140 track as 70 because the energy isn't as strong as other 140's isn't smart tagging, its just mathematically and theoretically wrong.

The vibe is often determined by the BPM (I don't want to get into arguments, so I won't say always). When you sit down to write a song, you take whatever idea you have and you start playing it at a certain tempo, again often specified by the BPM. If it's twice as fast or twice as slow, obviously the vibe will be different.



Yes I understand that, as I stated in the last sentence of the quote.

If you want to DJ based on vibe alone (which I agree is the better approach), that's great. But that doesn't change the fact that BPM is a fundamental aspect of music theory that any musician should know, and should never be brushed off as "doesn't matter." It's the same thing with key... If a song is labeled a certain key, then of course I'd prefer it to be labeled correctly.

Anyway, it's just my opinion that given a song that you've never heard before, a DJ should be able to tell right away if it's 70 or 140 bpm. It's just something I value, but if it's not important to others, then that's okay too.

Bottom line is... if you're going to ID-tag, I'd prefer it if you did so correctly. :P

From a production stand point choosing to write at normal time(140 dubstep as an example) and half time (70bpm) is more about the feeling of the automation in synths and arps, then it having anything to do with the drums. So I write a song in 70 bpm and the drums are still placed as 140, but this lets the synths have more room to play with the speeds of LFO's and such, but if I just want to do a chop sample song and not automate the basslines I would just write it in 140. Really it all depends on what tutorial that producer watched or how they learned to write that dictates what BPM in a specific genre they will use. I have 175 dnb songs and 82 bpm ones, they both for all intents and purposes sound the same and are easily beatmatched so what does it matter.

The vibe is often determined by the BPM (I don't want to get into arguments, so I won't say always). When you sit down to write a song, you take whatever idea you have and you start playing it at a certain tempo, again often specified by the BPM. If it's twice as fast or twice as slow, obviously the vibe will be different.

The vibe is often determined by the BPM (I don't want to get into arguments, so I won't say always). When you sit down to write a song, you take whatever idea you have and you start playing it at a certain tempo, again often specified by the BPM. If it's twice as fast or twice as slow, obviously the vibe will be different.



Yes I understand that, as I stated in the last sentence of the quote.

If you want to DJ based on vibe alone (which I agree is the better approach), that's great. But that doesn't change the fact that BPM is a fundamental aspect of music theory that any musician should know, and should never be brushed off as "doesn't matter." It's the same thing with key... If a song is labeled a certain key, then of course I'd prefer it to be labeled correctly.

Anyway, it's just my opinion that given a song that you've never heard before, a DJ should be able to tell right away if it's 70 or 140 bpm. It's just something I value, but if it's not important to others, then that's okay too.

Bottom line is... if you're going to ID-tag, I'd prefer it if you did so correctly. :P

Let's say you're 75% into your set and are building up the energy with uptempo songs (140 BPM), and then you drop a 70 BPM song that's been mislabeled as 140 BPM. That's just going to kill the energy buildup you've worked for, and will likely throw the crowd off. Of course, a proper DJ will know his/her tracks inside out and know not to drop that 70 BPM song no matter what the BPM says, but I am just trying to illustrate that BPM is more than mathematics.

care you give me an example? cause i don

Technically and sonically speaking, there is a huge difference between 70 BPM and 140 BPM, so it does irk me when BPMs are mislabeled. As others have said, it doesn't matter when beatmatching, but it makes a huge difference in the flow of the mix.

same goes for dubstep. it