75 BPM

Beat, bar and phrase lengths at 75 BPM

At 75 BPM one beat lasts 800 ms and a 4/4 bar lasts 3.2 s. That beat is a whole number of milliseconds, so delay and gate times can be typed in exactly, without rounding. That is 1.25 beats per second, or 18.75 bars of 4/4 per minute.

Dance tracks are usually arranged in 8-, 16- and 32-bar phrases. At 75 BPM a 16-bar phrase takes 51.2 s and a 32-bar intro or outro takes 1:42.4 min. That is 19.2 s longer than the same 16 bars at 120 BPM. A six-minute track at this tempo contains about 113 bars.

Delay times at 75 BPM

Straight values follow the beat; dotted values are 1.5 times as long and triplets are two-thirds as long. At 75 BPM the popular dotted-eighth delay is 600 ms and a quarter-note slapback is 800 ms. The Hz column is the matching rate for an LFO, tremolo or auto-pan synced to the straight note.

Reverb times at 75 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 75 BPM a 1/64-note pre-delay is 50 ms and a 1/32-note pre-delay is 100 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 75 BPM

75 BPM is a slow tempo; many listeners will also hear it at double-time. It sits in the middle of the ambient/downtempo range (60–100), near the low end of the hip-hop range (70–100) and near the low end of the reggae/dub range (70–100).

Counted at double-time (150 BPM) it matches techno and hardstyle. 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.

• Ambient/downtempo: typically 60–100 BPM — beatless ambient may not have a useful BPM at all.
• Hip-hop: typically 70–100 BPM — boom-bap often sits around 85–95.
• Reggae/dub: typically 70–100 BPM — the off-beat skank can make the pulse feel faster than it is.

Mixing into 75 BPM

To bring a track at another tempo up or down to 75 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 75 BPM reaches 69–81 BPM; a ±16 % range reaches 63–87 BPM.

Half-time, double-time and nearby tempos

Half-time of 75 BPM is 37.5 BPM and double-time is 150 BPM.

37.5 BPM is 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 10.53 ms, so neighbouring tempos are close enough to beatmatch with a small pitch move.

• Double-time: 150 BPM
• 70 BPM
• 73 BPM
• 74 BPM
• 76 BPM
• 77 BPM
• 80 BPM
• Half/double-time converter
• All tempos from 60 to 200 BPM