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hasezwei wrote:tbh i never got 120 anyway. i mean even if you go by house and trance being the most popular genres of electronic music it's just too damn slow.

Lemonlust wrote:I mean, most dubstep songs are 140 bpm. Would it not be considered dubstep if it were a different tempo?

YES.

...I don't believe that dubstep has to be a certain tempo in order to be dubstep. I would say that if it got fast enough it'd often be functionally indistinguishable from DnB, but that's because the two are musical cousins with many shared references including each one to the other (like Loefah saying he started out wanting to make slower, more danceable & vibe-heavy jungle, or the current fad for ½step in DnB.)

When people first started applying the term "dubstep" to the fairly broad continuum of bass-heavy underground sounds coming out there was a wider range of tempos in the music being described. The lowest common denominator was the Bass/Space/Pace formula, but specific ratios of each were pretty wide open back then.

As it coalesced into a more 'stable,' 'defined,' or 'generic' sound (all of these descriptives are true in some measure) then the tyranny of 140 arose from DJ complicity for the same reasons that DJs like house music: it's much easier to mix something that you know is going to follow the same tempo or pattern as the tune that's on deck without thinking ahead. You can just reach in the bag and know that it's all... the same.

I disagree with the earlier statement that when it gets too much slower it becomes downtempo - you can't say that slower stuff by Scorn or Barry Hercules' sounds like downtempo, because it's heavier and not just slower. Downtempo tends to have a different vibe that's more about chillin' and relaxing, while aggressively heavy music does NOT have that effect usually. You could say there's a certain tension that belongs to dubstep that's not a desired goal in much downtempo music...

FIGHT
B.P.M.
FASCISM!

buttock wrote:

hasezwei wrote:tbh i never got 120 anyway. i mean even if you go by house and trance being the most popular genres of electronic music it's just too damn slow.

Fruity used to be 140!!! the secret of the Dubstep Swagger. 120 Bpm is in more tradional DAWs where they sometimes record these old fashioned rock'n'roll bands.....

hasezwei wrote:but who cares about standard tempos in DAWs anyway ?