80 BPM

Beat, bar and phrase lengths at 80 BPM

At 80 BPM one beat lasts 750 ms and a 4/4 bar lasts 3 s. That beat is a whole number of milliseconds, so delay and gate times can be typed in exactly, without rounding. That is 1.333 beats per second, or 20 bars of 4/4 per minute.

Dance tracks are usually arranged in 8-, 16- and 32-bar phrases. At 80 BPM a 16-bar phrase takes 48 s and a 32-bar intro or outro takes 1:36.0 min. That is 16 s longer than the same 16 bars at 120 BPM. A six-minute track at this tempo contains about 120 bars.

Delay times at 80 BPM

Straight values follow the beat; dotted values are 1.5 times as long and triplets are two-thirds as long. At 80 BPM the popular dotted-eighth delay is 562.5 ms and a quarter-note slapback is 750 ms. The Hz column is the matching rate for an LFO, tremolo or auto-pan synced to the straight note.

Reverb times at 80 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 80 BPM a 1/64-note pre-delay is 46.88 ms and a 1/32-note pre-delay is 93.75 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 80 BPM

80 BPM is a relaxed, mid-slow tempo. It sits in the middle of the ambient/downtempo range (60–100), in the middle of the hip-hop range (70–100) and in the middle of the reggae/dub range (70–100).

Counted at double-time (160 BPM) it matches hardstyle, footwork/juke, drum and bass and hardcore/gabber. 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 80 BPM

To bring a track at another tempo up or down to 80 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 80 BPM reaches 73.6–86.4 BPM; a ±16 % range reaches 67.2–92.8 BPM.

Half-time, double-time and nearby tempos

Half-time of 80 BPM is 40 BPM and double-time is 160 BPM.

40 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 9.26 ms, so neighbouring tempos are close enough to beatmatch with a small pitch move.

• Double-time: 160 BPM
• 75 BPM
• 78 BPM
• 79 BPM
• 81 BPM
• 82 BPM
• 85 BPM
• Half/double-time converter
• All tempos from 60 to 200 BPM