In a prompt
Stating '82 BPM' instead of 'slow' is the single highest-value edit you can make to a music prompt.
Read more about Prompt libraryTempo in Music: Definition and BPM Ranges
The speed of a piece of music, measured in beats per minute. Tempo sets the physical feel of a track more directly than any other single decision.
In short
Tempo is the speed of a piece of music, measured in beats per minute (BPM). It is the single decision that most directly controls how a track feels physically — people synchronise their movement to a beat without meaning to.
- Measured in
- Beats per minute (BPM)
- Ballads / ambient
- 60–80 BPM
- Hip hop
- 80–100 (trap 130–150 half-time)
- House / pop
- 120–128 BPM
- Drum and bass
- 170–175 BPM
BPM counts how many beats fall in a minute: at 120 BPM there are two beats per second, which is why 120 feels like a comfortable walking pace and turns up constantly in dance and pop. The classical tradition names tempo ranges instead of numbering them — largo is slow and broad, andante is a walking pace, allegro is fast and bright, presto is very fast — and those names describe character as much as speed.
The useful ranges are genre-specific. Ballads and ambient sit roughly 60–80. Hip hop is broadly 80–100, though trap is usually written at 130–150 and felt in half-time. House and most pop cluster around 120–128. Drum and bass runs 170–175. Knowing the convention matters because tempo carries genre signals on its own: the same chord progression at 75 and at 128 will be heard as two different kinds of music.
Half-time and double-time are the concepts that resolve most confusion. A track at 140 BPM with the snare on beat three feels like 70, which is why detected BPM sometimes seems wrong — it is not wrong, it is measuring the pulse rather than the feel. This is also why running playlists work at either 85 or 170: the step cadence entrains to the same underlying beat.
The Italian tempo markings deserve numbers attached to them, because they are still how printed scores name speed. Largo is roughly 40–60 BPM, adagio 66–76, andante 76–108, moderato 108–120, allegro 120–156, vivace 156–176 and presto 168–200. Allegro tempo is the one most people meet first and the one most often mistranslated: it means "cheerful" in Italian, not "fast", which is why an allegro marking implies a bright character as much as a speed, and why two allegro movements at the same BPM can feel quite different.
When prompting, state BPM as a number rather than a word. "Slow" is ambiguous across genres; "72 BPM" is not, and it will constrain a generator toward the arrangement density that tempo implies. If you need the number for a track you already have rather than one you are about to make, that is a job for a tempo finder — drop the file in and it reads the pulse and returns the figure, which is the same measurement a DJ makes by ear before beatmatching.
Music and AI terms related to tempo
Where tempo decides something
Three places tempo decides something.
In the browser
The BPM finder reads the tempo of any file locally, which is how you match a track to an edit.
Read more about BPM detector
In a genre
Tempo is most of what separates boom bap from trap, or house from drum and bass.
Read more about EdmExplore
More music and AI terms explained
The terms that carry enough confusion to need a full page.
Tempo — questions people ask
What is tempo in music?
The speed of a piece, measured in beats per minute. At 120 BPM there are two beats every second, which is why 120 feels like a comfortable walking pace and turns up constantly in dance and pop.
How do I find the tempo of a song?
Tap along and count the beats in fifteen seconds, then multiply by four — or drop the file into a BPM finder, which measures the rhythmic pulse and returns a number in seconds.
What is the difference between tempo and rhythm?
Tempo is how fast the beats come; rhythm is the pattern of notes placed against them. Two tracks at the same tempo can have completely different rhythms.
What BPM are common genres?
House and techno sit around 120 to 130, hip-hop and boom bap 85 to 95, trap 130 to 150 felt as half time, drum and bass near 174, and lo-fi 70 to 90.
Why do BPM detectors report half or double the tempo?
Tempo is genuinely ambiguous — a track at 140 BPM contains a perfectly valid 70 BPM pulse. Detectors pick the strongest periodicity, and both readings are musically correct.
Does tempo matter in an AI music prompt?
It is the single most useful thing to specify. Models honour an explicit number far more reliably than adjectives like 'upbeat', which different genres interpret sixty beats apart.
Put the vocabulary to work
Describe the track you want and hear it in under a minute.