Tempo / bpm

Ha! I’ve been hanging out in the 63-68 bpm range lately on my Digitone. But I can’t seem to do melodies and beats well right now so it’s been soundscape city for me.

I did a live show with some industrial techno guys last spring and they practically fainted with expressions of “system error!” when I told them my set started at 54bpm :wink: . It was partially so I could at times run the Machinedrum at 2x speed while keeping my initial melodies slow and heavy. And the set did speed up at one point to 153bpm.

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I wonder if our tastes lean toward certain tempos. Every time I end up making something I like it’s in the 95-105 bpm range.

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That’s the range I really like too when I have beats going.I’m probably really 90-110. It’s laid back, but not too laid back. I try and push myself out of that range but I stray back to like 93 or 107 too easily.

(The 54 bpm song came about as a half of 108. I was running something at half speed or double speed to get extra room out of my patterns and it kindof took over).

Just occurred to me that I gravitate to multiples of 12 especially 72,84,96,108. And even numbers also…

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hmmm
mine are 74, 86, 98, 110, 122, 132

060, 075, 95, 111, 137
120, 150, 190, 222, 274

I often multiply tempo by 2 in a song. If you multiply tempo by 1.5, you can apply a 5th pitch to samples.
I you multiply by 2^(1/12), you can add a semi-tone.

Tuned tempi :
103.125 > A tuning tempo, for rolls, retrigs
122.64 > C tuning tempo.
Etc…

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This is definitely a very interesting aspect. Linking tempo (“bpm”) and tuning (“bps”).
But I don’t see how you get your tuned tempi values.

A = 440 Hz = 440 Beat Per Sec.
440 x 60 = 26 400 Beat Per Minute.
Divide by 2 until you get a regular tempo.
26 400 / 2 / 2 /…= 103.125 BPM

A semi-tone upper :
A# = A x 2^(1/12)
A semi-tone lower :
Ab = A / 2^(1/12)

5 semi tone upper :
D = A x (2^(1/12))^5

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All right.
That’s the step I had missed :slight_smile:

Could bring water to the mill to conspiracy theories around the RIGHT frequency for A :smile:
102 bpm => A = 435,5 Hz seems a cool value.

Heretic ! :smile:
I use 103.1 BPM => 439,893 Hz

The B.B.C. tuning-note is derived from an oscillator controlled by a piezo-electric crystal that vibrates with a frequency of one million Hz. This is reduced to a frequency of 1,000 Hz by electronic dividers; it is then multiplied eleven times and divided by twenty-five, so producing the required frequency of 440 Hz. As 439 Hz is a prime number a frequency of 439 Hz could not be broadcast by such means as this.

I tried using Fibonacci but after a slow start it quickly got out of control