· 6 min read
BPM by genre: a cheat sheet
The tempo ranges producers actually work in, from 60 BPM lo-fi to 174 BPM drum and bass — and what to do when a round hands you a number between them.
Tempo is the first decision in most tracks and the one people look up most often. Here is the short version, then the part that matters more: what to do when the number is not the one your genre expects.
The ranges
| Genre | Common BPM | Full range |
|---|---|---|
| Lo-fi hip hop | 70–85 | 60–90 |
| Boom bap | 85–95 | 80–100 |
| Trap | 130–150 (half-time feel at 65–75) | 120–160 |
| Hip hop, modern | 80–110 | 70–120 |
| R&B | 60–90 | 55–100 |
| Reggaeton | 90–100 | 85–105 |
| House | 120–128 | 115–132 |
| Techno | 128–140 | 120–150 |
| Disco / funk | 110–125 | 100–130 |
| Synthwave | 80–120 | 75–130 |
| UK garage | 130–140 | 125–140 |
| Drum and bass | 170–176 | 160–180 |
| Dubstep | 140 (half-time feel at 70) | 135–145 |
| Ambient | 60–80, often free | any |
Half-time is why the table lies
Trap is written at 140 and felt at 70. Dubstep is the same trick. The grid runs fast, the snare lands on beat three instead of two and four, and the whole thing sits back at half the speed it is counted at. This is the single most useful fact in the table, because it means a tempo you think is wrong for a style is often exactly right at double or half.
So a 68 BPM round is not a slow round with no options. It is a trap round where the hi-hats do the work — write the hats at sixteenths and triplets, put the kick and snare where they would be at 136, and it will feel like trap because the ear takes its tempo from the hats.
Doubling and halving, in practice
- Given something slow (60–75): half-time trap, lo-fi, R&B, ambient. Or write drum and bass at double time — 70 is 140 counted the other way, and DnB at 174 is close enough to 2× 87 that a fast round works too.
- Given something middling (85–100): boom bap and hip hop are already home. Reggaeton sits here. Disco works if you push the hats to eighths.
- Given something fast (110–120): house, disco, funk, synthwave. Also half-time to 55–60 for something very slow and heavy.
- The rule underneath all of it: any tempo can be any genre if you choose which note value carries the pulse.
What a tempo actually decides
Less than people think. It sets how long a bar lasts and therefore how much space there is between hits, and that is most of it. A slow tempo leaves room and asks you to fill it — more notes, more detail, longer decays. A fast one leaves less room and punishes clutter, so the parts get simpler and the space between them does the work.
Eight bars of 4/4 at 60 BPM runs thirty-two seconds. The same eight bars at 120 runs sixteen. That is the practical difference: at the slow end you are writing twice as much music, and every gap is twice as obvious.
Try it against a tempo you did not pick
Reading about tempo is much less useful than being handed one. Every round in GrooveArena rolls a number between 60 and 120 BPM and gives the same one to everybody in the room — you get four minutes and eight bars, and the only question is what idiom you reach for. The rules are here, and the library is full of what other people did with the same number.
Four minutes is shorter than it sounds.
Play a round