Topic: beats per minute
How do you find beats per minute for songs that you want to record
- Russell_Harding
- Alien moderator
- Offline
Re: beats per minute
if you dont have a metronome I would play the song and count the beats there are in 10 seconds and multiply by 6 if there are 16 beats in 10 seconds x 6 =96 bpm (beats per minute) just look at your watch and count for ten seonds the number of beats 
"Growing old is not for sissies"
- PapaTom
- Senior Member
- Offline
Re: beats per minute
If a song gives you the inescapable urge to get up and dance, it's at exactly 120 bpm.
Actually that's only half a joke. Disco music was typically recorded at 120 bpm, about twice the rate of an average person's heartbeat. For some reason, this tempo has been found to physically affect the human body in a way that causes people to want to get up and move around. Most marches are also performed at this tempo for maximum arousal of the crowd.
If you do not have access to a metronome or a drum machine (which will have a built-in metronome), take the tempo of your favorite Bee Gees or Donna Summers disco song and use that (~120 bpm) as a yardstick. If you need a more accurate measurement, you will need to invest in a metronome, which I'm sure can be had for just a few bucks these days.
Me with my first ukulele, a Junior Beatles model, in 1966. After Mom threw it down the stairs in a fit of rage, I became a drummer for life. At age 43, I bought my second uke...