161 BPM

Beat, bar and phrase lengths at 161 BPM

At 161 BPM one beat lasts 372.67 ms and a 4/4 bar lasts 1.491 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 2.683 beats per second, or 40.25 bars of 4/4 per minute.

Dance tracks are usually arranged in 8-, 16- and 32-bar phrases. At 161 BPM a 16-bar phrase takes 23.85 s and a 32-bar intro or outro takes 47.7 s. That is 8.15 s shorter than the same 16 bars at 120 BPM. A six-minute track at this tempo contains about 242 bars.

Delay times at 161 BPM

Straight values follow the beat; dotted values are 1.5 times as long and triplets are two-thirds as long. At 161 BPM the popular dotted-eighth delay is 279.5 ms and a quarter-note slapback is 372.67 ms. The Hz column is the matching rate for an LFO, tremolo or auto-pan synced to the straight note.

Reverb times at 161 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 161 BPM a 1/64-note pre-delay is 23.29 ms and a 1/32-note pre-delay is 46.58 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 161 BPM

161 BPM is a fast tempo that is often felt at half-time. It sits in the middle of the footwork/juke range (155–165), near the low end of the drum and bass range (160–180) and near the low end of the hardcore/gabber range (160–200).

Heard at half-time (80.5 BPM) it lines up with ambient/downtempo, hip-hop and reggae/dub. 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.

• Footwork/juke: typically 155–165 BPM — built around 160 with half-time and triplet patterns.
• Drum and bass: typically 160–180 BPM — modern releases mostly sit at 170–176; often felt at half-time.
• Hardcore/gabber: typically 160–200 BPM — speedcore and some gabber go well beyond 200.

Mixing into 161 BPM

To bring a track at another tempo up or down to 161 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 161 BPM reaches 148.1–173.9 BPM; a ±16 % range reaches 135.2–186.8 BPM.

Half-time, double-time and nearby tempos

Half-time of 161 BPM is 80.5 BPM and double-time is 322 BPM.

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

80.5 BPM falls between two whole tempos, so the nearest pages, 80 and 81 BPM, are linked instead.

Each 1 BPM step at this tempo changes the beat by about 2.3 ms, so neighbouring tempos are close enough to beatmatch with a small pitch move.

• Near half-time: 80 BPM
• Near half-time: 81 BPM
• 159 BPM
• 160 BPM
• 162 BPM
• 163 BPM
• 165 BPM
• Half/double-time converter
• All tempos from 60 to 200 BPM