125 BPM

Beat, bar and phrase lengths at 125 BPM

At 125 BPM one beat lasts 480 ms and a 4/4 bar lasts 1.92 s. That beat is a whole number of milliseconds, so delay and gate times can be typed in exactly, without rounding. That is 2.083 beats per second, or 31.25 bars of 4/4 per minute.

Dance tracks are usually arranged in 8-, 16- and 32-bar phrases. At 125 BPM a 16-bar phrase takes 30.72 s and a 32-bar intro or outro takes 1:01.4 min. That is 1.28 s shorter than the same 16 bars at 120 BPM. A six-minute track at this tempo contains about 188 bars.

Delay times at 125 BPM

Straight values follow the beat; dotted values are 1.5 times as long and triplets are two-thirds as long. At 125 BPM the popular dotted-eighth delay is 360 ms and a quarter-note slapback is 480 ms. The Hz column is the matching rate for an LFO, tremolo or auto-pan synced to the straight note.

Reverb times at 125 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 125 BPM a 1/64-note pre-delay is 30 ms and a 1/32-note pre-delay is 60 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 125 BPM

125 BPM is squarely in the most common club and dance-music range. It sits near the upper end of the pop range (90–130), near the upper end of the disco range (105–130), in the middle of the house range (118–130), at the bottom of the UK garage/breakbeat range (125–140) and at the bottom of the techno range (125–150).

Heard at half-time (62.5 BPM) it lines up with ambient/downtempo. A detector or a tag in your library may report either reading, so check by ear which one the drums suggest.

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.
• UK garage/breakbeat: typically 125–140 BPM — shuffled and broken drums can make the count ambiguous.
• Techno: typically 125–150 BPM — from restrained 125 to fast, hard styles near 150.

Mixing into 125 BPM

To bring a track at another tempo up or down to 125 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 125 BPM reaches 115–135 BPM; a ±16 % range reaches 105–145 BPM.

Half-time, double-time and nearby tempos

Half-time of 125 BPM is 62.5 BPM and double-time is 250 BPM.

250 BPM is outside the 60–200 range of these pages; the half/double-time converter works with any value.

62.5 BPM falls between two whole tempos, so the nearest pages, 62 and 63 BPM, are linked instead.

Each 1 BPM step at this tempo changes the beat by about 3.81 ms, so neighbouring tempos are close enough to beatmatch with a small pitch move.

• Near half-time: 62 BPM
• Near half-time: 63 BPM
• 120 BPM
• 123 BPM
• 124 BPM
• 126 BPM
• 127 BPM
• 130 BPM
• Half/double-time converter
• All tempos from 60 to 200 BPM