137 BPM

Beat, bar and phrase lengths at 137 BPM

At 137 BPM one beat lasts 437.96 ms and a 4/4 bar lasts 1.752 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 2.283 beats per second, or 34.25 bars of 4/4 per minute.

Dance tracks are usually arranged in 8-, 16- and 32-bar phrases. At 137 BPM a 16-bar phrase takes 28.03 s and a 32-bar intro or outro takes 56.06 s. That is 3.97 s shorter than the same 16 bars at 120 BPM. A six-minute track at this tempo contains about 206 bars.

Delay times at 137 BPM

Straight values follow the beat; dotted values are 1.5 times as long and triplets are two-thirds as long. At 137 BPM the popular dotted-eighth delay is 328.47 ms and a quarter-note slapback is 437.96 ms. The Hz column is the matching rate for an LFO, tremolo or auto-pan synced to the straight note.

Reverb times at 137 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 137 BPM a 1/64-note pre-delay is 27.37 ms and a 1/32-note pre-delay is 54.74 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 137 BPM

137 BPM is in the up-tempo, high-energy range. It sits near the upper end of the UK garage/breakbeat range (125–140), in the middle of the techno range (125–150), in the middle of the trance range (128–145) and near the low end of the dubstep range (135–145).

Heard at half-time (68.5 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.

• 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.
• Trance: typically 128–145 BPM — a regular kick usually gives a clear pulse.
• Dubstep: typically 135–145 BPM — usually counted around 140 but felt at half-time, near 70.

Mixing into 137 BPM

To bring a track at another tempo up or down to 137 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 137 BPM reaches 126–148 BPM; a ±16 % range reaches 115.1–158.9 BPM.

Half-time, double-time and nearby tempos

Half-time of 137 BPM is 68.5 BPM and double-time is 274 BPM.

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

68.5 BPM falls between two whole tempos, so the nearest pages, 68 and 69 BPM, are linked instead.

Each 1 BPM step at this tempo changes the beat by about 3.17 ms, so neighbouring tempos are close enough to beatmatch with a small pitch move.

• Near half-time: 68 BPM
• Near half-time: 69 BPM
• 135 BPM
• 136 BPM
• 138 BPM
• 139 BPM
• 140 BPM
• Half/double-time converter
• All tempos from 60 to 200 BPM