119 BPM

Beat, bar and phrase lengths at 119 BPM

At 119 BPM one beat lasts 504.2 ms and a 4/4 bar lasts 2.017 s. The beat is not a whole number of milliseconds, so round to the nearest 0.1 ms when you type times in by hand, or use your plugin's tempo sync. That is 1.983 beats per second, or 29.75 bars of 4/4 per minute.

Dance tracks are usually arranged in 8-, 16- and 32-bar phrases. At 119 BPM a 16-bar phrase takes 32.27 s and a 32-bar intro or outro takes 1:04.5 min. That is 0.27 s longer than the same 16 bars at 120 BPM. A six-minute track at this tempo contains about 179 bars.

Delay times at 119 BPM

Straight values follow the beat; dotted values are 1.5 times as long and triplets are two-thirds as long. At 119 BPM the popular dotted-eighth delay is 378.15 ms and a quarter-note slapback is 504.2 ms. The Hz column is the matching rate for an LFO, tremolo or auto-pan synced to the straight note.

Reverb times at 119 BPM

A common way to keep a reverb in time is to tie its pre-delay to a short note value and let the tail fade within a longer one. At 119 BPM a 1/64-note pre-delay is 31.51 ms and a 1/32-note pre-delay is 63.03 ms.

The decay control on most reverbs is RT60, the time it takes the tail to fall by 60 dB, so the audible tail ends earlier than the number shown. Treat these values as starting points and adjust by ear.

Genres at 119 BPM

119 BPM is squarely in the most common club and dance-music range. It sits near the upper end of the pop range (90–130), in the middle of the disco range (105–130) and near the low end of the house range (118–130).

These ranges are common practice rather than rules: genre is decided by rhythm, sound and scene as much as by tempo, and plenty of tracks sit outside the usual numbers.

• Pop: typically 90–130 BPM — a wide band; the genre is defined by songwriting, not tempo.
• Disco: typically 105–130 BPM — steady four-on-the-floor sections are easy to count.
• House: typically 118–130 BPM — most club house clusters around 120–128.

Mixing into 119 BPM

To bring a track at another tempo up or down to 119 BPM, move its pitch fader by the percentage below. Without key lock the key moves too, by the number of semitones shown; about 6 % is one semitone, so changes beyond that are where key lock (master tempo) starts to matter.

A ±8 % pitch fader on a track at 119 BPM reaches 109.5–128.5 BPM; a ±16 % range reaches 100–138 BPM.

Half-time, double-time and nearby tempos

Half-time of 119 BPM is 59.5 BPM and double-time is 238 BPM.

59.5 BPM and 238 BPM are outside the 60–200 range of these pages; the half/double-time converter works with any value.

Each 1 BPM step at this tempo changes the beat by about 4.2 ms, so neighbouring tempos are close enough to beatmatch with a small pitch move.

• 115 BPM
• 117 BPM
• 118 BPM
• 120 BPM
• 121 BPM
• Half/double-time converter
• All tempos from 60 to 200 BPM