Breakbeat BPM

How fast, and who says so

Breakbeat is a wide family: the range runs 110–175 BPM, and the tempos producers build at sit all over it:

• Wikipedia, Breakbeat: 110–175 BPM
• Native Instruments, How to make breakbeat music: builds one break at 113.93 BPM and a hardcore one at 155

The groove on this page

Breakbeat is built from a drum break, a bar or two of a funk or soul drummer, sampled, chopped and played back faster. Instead of four on the floor the kick lands on the one and in syncopated places, the snare on two and four with ghost notes around it. Which is why the tempo is so wide: the same break sits at its original 114 or is pitched up to 155 for hardcore, as Native Instruments' tutorial does with both.

On this page: the app's Starter kit at 134 BPM, swing 54 %.

Delay and LFO values

A delay in time with the track repeats once per note value: a quarter note lasts 60,000 divided by the BPM, in milliseconds. Dotted is one and a half times that, triplet two thirds. An LFO synced to a note value cycles at 1,000 divided by those milliseconds, in Hz. The table follows the tempo above: − and + move it, and so does a tempo you tap.

Genres near this tempo

• Dubstep: 135–142 BPM
• Trance: 130–150 BPM
• Psytrance: 138–148 BPM
• Hardstyle: about 150 BPM

Then make something of it

The door opens Brumm, a club track with a beat and a bass, with this groove's low end in it. The app runs between 90 and 150 BPM, so a faster or slower tempo goes in at half or double. No account, no upload: it travels inside the link. Hum a line over it, and it becomes an instrument.

Nothing is recorded: no microphone, only your taps, counted in the browser. The groove's sounds are the app's own samples, fetched when you tap Play. How the site counts visits.