Common Tempos of EDM Genres in Beats per Minute (BPM)
We can use the tempo of a song as part of classifying the music genre of the song. Knowing the common tempos of a music genre can help us understand that genre better, which can help, for example, to make songs for that genre. This post is about common EDM genre tempos.
Common Tempos of EDM Genres
Songs within a certain EDM genre have a common tempo range for that specific genre. These ranges are in the table below.
The table shows the genres alphabetically ordered and the common tempos in beats per minute (BPM) for each genre. Also, the table shows the sources from which I found the genre tempo. I tried to find at least two such sources for each genre.
It is possible to find songs with a tempo outside the tempo ranges in the table since these ranges are only common tempo ranges. Also, people can assign a certain song to the wrong genre or think wrongly about the song’s tempo.
For example, the song ‘Starta Dj Team – Crazy Drummer’ on Beatport is part of the progressive house genre, and the song’s tempo is 180 BPM. However, by listening to it, I think that song is not part of the progressive house genre. Also, I think progressive house songs don’t have a tempo of 180 BPM.
Another example is the song ‘Lemongrass – Moon and Sun’ on Beatport is also part of the progressive house genre, and the song’s tempo is 196 BPM. Again, by listening to it, I think that song is not part of the progressive house genre. Also, the mentioned BPM of that song is wrong, at least from what I can hear in the preview.
It might be possible that songs are part of multiple genres (or we want to make such a song). Then such a song has the characteristics of those multiple genres, but it can have more characteristics of one specific genre than from the other genres. In that case, the song could have (or get) a BPM from the genre that matches the most characteristics.
For a multiple-genre song, each of these genres has a common range with the lowest and highest BPM. When we know the lowest and highest BPM of these ranges, we can combine them into a new range, the range for the multiple genre song.
Some genres in the table have a half-time tempo BPM range, and all the non-half-time BPM ranges in the table are in common time. A half-time tempo is when the tempo of a song can feel twice as slow as the common time (source: Half-time (music)).
Hopefully, you have learned something from the mentioned common tempos of EDM genres.
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By Markus Kreukniet
Markus Kreukniet is an electronic dance music (EDM) producer and founder of Passion for EDM. He wants to share his EDM knowledge with the rest of the world. Read more about Markus Kreukniet.
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