115bpm and 116bpm are arbitrary tempo numbers, it could be 70bpm/71bpm or 135bpm/136bpm… the question is do you get the feeling where round number tempos don’t feel/vibe right, so you end up working in between? (115.4bpm, 70.65bpm, 135.2bpm kinda thing…)
Most of my music is 60bpm to 105bpm, so it stands to reason the slower the tempo the more you’re likely to notice the difference between whole numbers.
I’ve definitely become more aware of this over the last couple of years where I’ve been spending more time locked into seq tempos (coming from a looser live playing background)… but I’ve always tried to keep to whole number tempos for general ease (project management, working with samples, etc).
Then there’s Swing, where 52% isn’t enough and 53% is too much…
I have. What I usually do is pick one or the other tempo and move elements back and forth relative to each other (i.e. laidback snare or rushed hihats…)
I don’t use swing hardly at all, but if I do anything over 55% sounds like too much.
Most of my music lately is at a higher tempo, 150 - 200 bpm. I notice that sometimes the song just wants to be a certain speed. 178 is frequently a sweet spot but I couldn’t tell you why, probably something to do with the brakes and patterns I’ve been using.
At that speed swing is completely unnoticeable or just makes it sound sloppy. But if I’m making something slower, 100 - 120, the swing on different devices sounds better or worse at different settings. At this point I prefer to just push the hats or snares or whatever slightly off the grid myself to get the exact feel that I want without relying on the instrument’s algorithm.
I get a little specific depending on the reason. sometimes I’ll record a guitar part at (arbitrary numbers) 100bpm and then align the recording up against a metronome and over a duration of X bars it actually lines up better with 99.9 or 100.1 bpm. Rather than alter the tempo, try and slice then move around, or otherwise make it fit 100bpm I’ll do my best to make everything else work around 99.9bpm to keep the instrument sounding humanistic, so that’s pretty specific.
Other times, I just tap out a tempo and then adjust it to what feels right. Whole numbers are easier to work with so, if possible, I’ll start from that, but I think that there are times when you hear a groove a certain way and one bpm in either direction kills it.
I have noticed that I am not sensitive to tempo at all, but I tend to be either in the world of 120-125, or 130-137 lately.
But if I change tempo after been working for a while , it often sounds very weird in the beginning , but I get used to it in 15 minutes.
If I want a faster feeling , I more often change how instrument react, and how they sound.
Some slow songs can sound pretty fast , and fast songs can sound pretty slow. Which is quite interesting.
i can usually sense 1-2 bpms but it is most often not problem with my sensitivity but musicality of the track
ime if a track/composition is too tempo sensitive then the problem is in the arrangement
With bpm the round numbers are enough for me. Unless i’m trying to match the tempo to a sample loop or something. But with swing i never had a device where the settings were fine enough.
This is a fun watch. And yeah, decimal points in tempos always seemed a bit “chin scratchy” to me and I’ve never use them myself.
For me, tempo sensitivity is very relative. It really depends on what I’ve been listening to or playing before, and for how long. I find that I can adapt to all tempos, but not abruptly between huge jumps. That being said, I tend to like drum and bass at 174 and I don’t know why
no way I can tell 1-2 even 3 bpm apart, 131 or 135 almost identical to me.
I only have one quirk though, for some reason I can’t use even numbers for bpm except 120. 120 is a friend.
but swing on the other hand, can’t figure out swing, 52 is barely noticeable and 53 is too much. how on earth people handle swing is beyond me
100 bpm has a certain magic I found recently, as does 134, because it creates natural rhythms you can dance to. Funnily enough, 15 years ago I was playing around 140-150 bpm. I have to keep pitching up when playing vinyl for them to stay on grid. And yeah for me the difference is noticeable.
Tempo between 70BPM and 197BPM for me. Because of MIDI and having my tempo control on a knob!
I can feel 1-2BPM difference, probably not less.
My issue with swing (on my Hapax) is that I would like it to be non-linear so you have finer control around 50%, where its needed. I rarely use above 69%.
While i’m out for a walk or biking/skating around, tempo certainly affects me more. I’ve experimented with slight offsets of my tracks and found i love skating to 92, biking to 140, and walking to 119. Feels most natural and groovy to me, without pushing it or feeling sluggish
I got heavy into road cycling a few years ago and used to aim to have a pedalling cadence of 90-95, which equates to bpm… I used to mentally sing AC/DC’s Back In Black riff on repeat to myself that would give me a guaranteed 92-94bpm.
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