12/11/2012
gustabo
Here's an interesting page regarding tempo and click tracks
http://labs.echonest.com/click/
12/11/2012
sharke
Small differences in tempo are more readily perceived when in relation to each other. If the song you're listening to increases by 2bpm halfway through, you notice.  A 2bpm difference between songs is less noticeable (unless you're an autistic savant and have some unusual power in this respect) .

But I sometimes wonder if tempo has a "color" associated with it, like pitch. I often wonder about people's choice of key, and if people will perceive my song as less interesting if I arrange it in C, for instance. If I choose Gb instead, does it sound more interesting because it's a less common key?


Similarly, do people choose 123bpm because they feel like it'll stand apart from the more common tempo of 120bpm? 


I tend to choose tempos by tapping them, having spent some time jamming the riff or chords by feel. It's very rarely a round number. 


Tempo is very powerful though. Sometimes I'll spend ages feeling that there's something not quite right about a song, so I'll shift the tempo by +-5bpm (or more) and all of a sudden it's found it's groove. 
12/12/2012
mike_321
Thanks for the replies everyone! Interesting stuff! I am less interested in the number 119.84 (or, rather - as quantumeffect correctly pointed out/calculated and memory disserved - 119.86), as I am in knowing more about fellow producers and how they feel about tempo and how they end up choosing it. The reasons behind their (your) decisions... sharke, I have posed those exact questions to myself, too! What key to put one's project in is a similar topic of discussion for sure! Especially when talking about beat-driven, purely electronic music.
12/12/2012
tbosco
I stand there in my studio like an idiot and and dance to my tune, and the number that feels best while I'm shaking all over the place is the one I go with.  LMAO
12/12/2012
mike_321
hahaha +1 to that, tbosco xD
12/12/2012
Starise
 Tony -lol.

 I mostly start by a feel I get for a particular passage or idea and then if I carry it further I tap a tempo say into a guitar effector or  my metronome which has a function in it that lets me tap a button and it shows me the tempo and this is how I decide on a project tempo. One of my last projects was at 111 BPM.

 I have read  that the reason for the common 120 tempo is based on a persons heart rate...well most people unless you are doing coke or something.

 Give or take a few bpm, this is the tempo of your heart. Making songs in that tempo  fit well into a persons inner rhythm. A little slower than that and the song takes on a more relaxed feel, tempos of 130 or higher are geared towards getting the heartrate up, the adrenalin flowing, like metal music.

 A song written at say 126 bpm might be just enough to pull it out of limbo.Instead of the Sonar preset of 120.

 So the tempo is a really big influence on how music feels.Something I intended to make more use of was to change tempos during a song because this adds more interest in some situations.

 As for why certain bands might use an odd tempo of 119.83, I can't really say. The 48/44.1 khz conversion makes a lot of sense. Us  musician types can have a ton of odd reasons why we do something.

 I noticed quite awhile ago when I needed to play someone elses material that all kinds of goofy things were going on. A lot of bands seem to like playing in places that can be difficult to tune to or play.Maybe this is intentional to make it diificult to play their material or maybe they all tuned off of one guitar and it wasn't tuned up right or the guitar player likes alternate tunings....I know I ran off topic  here sorry...on the subject of why some bands choose certain tempos it could be anything. If the band is into numerology they might decide to use only hex tunings and tempos( this isn't me BTW..not by a long shot) If 7 is significant someone might base an idea off of it. I once heard an album that was created based on the light wave lengths of the colors the rainbow....It is probably most often based on the feel of the music though.

 Reasons are both scientific and unscientific for tempo choice. I am of the opinion that numbers are significant even if they seem random.
12/12/2012
Jeff Evans
Just to let Starise and others know the average heart rate is not 120 BPM. It is usually somewhere between 60 and 72 BPM although that figure can vary. Notice it is still a multiple of 12. If your heart rate was 120 (all the time) you would be having some problems!

Keys are another story though. All keys can sound quite different. A piece in C# for example can sound quite different to the same thing in either C or Bb. Composers use keys all the time in order to convey different things. The flat keys definitely have a different sound compared to the sharp keys. This is worth exploring. Maybe we can some research on this.

Getting back to tempos I think any whole number for tempo eg (111BPM) is very valid. Of course if the tempos are slow eg 60 BPM then a change of 1 BPM is more obvious compared to say 240 to 241 BPM.

Thanks gustabo for those interesting links. 

http://musicmachinery.com...iting-the-click-track/

Those articles are very interesting. When I was studying a Jazz degree many moons ago they told us that the very slow increase in tempo over time in a Jazz bebop situation for example is very desirable. As in 'White Rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane or 'Sympathy for the Devil' by the Rolling Stones examples in the above link. Apart from the obvious tempo variations both those have this gentle upward tempo shift which can sound great.

Try experimenting with slow or gradual or slight tempo shifts within your music more and you may be surprised how good it can sound. There is way not enough of this going on. Too many things are done at a constant tempo which actually is not really a natural thing live. 




12/13/2012
Starise

  Thanks for clearing the misinformation up Jeff. The average blood PRESSURE is 120 over 80 and average heart rate is 60 to 100 bpm from what I garnered on the web.

 I did read an article about there being a correlation between music,tempo and our heart rate. I was hoping someone else remembered reading it because I thought it was interesting but I didn't remember all of the details from the article..I apologize for getting the details wrong . Basically the article was making the case I made earlier,that our heart rates can be tied to song rhythms.Here is a similar article although not the one I read which made more of a case for our folllowing something easier if it was tied to our HR- 

http://www.livestrong.com...ween-music-heart-rate/

Maybe this is why a lot of ballads are written in the 80-95bpm range. That would make sense from that perspective. A common tempo of 120 also fits well into the theory. 

 In my case, if I get a certain feel for a song and try to go with a default of 120, my groove goes away almost immediately or I have to follow it instead if it following me. I personally want it to follow me and not change my ideas based on a preset tempo if the standard makes me change my ideas.

 In Dance ,Rap and Techno music more often than not the computer is the conductor with parts being added to it.Not necessarily a bad thing, usually not my thing . I have done some loop tunes. One of my first favorite bands was Kraftwerk....." we are the robots....." if you remember that then you are probably the same vintage as me. I think the fact that it was so exact is what made it interesting. At that time not  many musicians were making anything even remotely like it,and they were some of the first to explore sequencing at that level. Their music was about as robotic as it gets lol.
12/13/2012
Bristol_Jonesey
Just to let Starise and others know the average heart rate is not 120 BPM. It is usually somewhere between 60 and 72 BPM although that figure can vary. Notice it is still a multiple of 12. If your heart rate was 120 (all the time) you would be having some problems!


Thing is Jeff, our definition of a minute is purely arbitrary, so any "magic" associated with multiples or divisors using a minute as a base is equally arbitrary.

A bit like these people who think there's "magic" in retuning to A = 444Hz or something equally nonsensical.

http://www.gearslutz.com/...d-tuning-standard.html

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