Amapiano BPM

How fast, and who says so

Where the two sources overlap: 110–115 BPM. Each in its own words:

• Splice, What is amapiano music? (2025): 110–115 BPM
• Roland, Production Hacks: Creating Amapiano Tracks (2023): 108–115 BPM

The groove on this page

What plays here at 113: a soft kick on every beat, a shaker on every 16th with the accent on the beat, an open hat on the offbeats, a percussion hit between the beats, and the log drum. The log drum plays nine notes over two bars, on C, G, F and E♭, and not one of them lands with the kick: that gap is the bounce. The 56 % swing pushes every second 16th about 16 ms late, inside the 54 to 58 % RouteNote's beatmaker guide (2025) recommends.

On this page: the app's Soft kit at 113 BPM, swing 56 %, with the Log drum bass sound.

Delay and LFO values

A delay in time with the track repeats once per note value: a quarter note lasts 60,000 divided by the BPM, in milliseconds. Dotted is one and a half times that, triplet two thirds. An LFO synced to a note value cycles at 1,000 divided by those milliseconds, in Hz. The table follows the tempo above: − and + move it, and so does a tempo you tap.

Genres near this tempo

• Afrobeats: 100–115 BPM
• House: 115–130 BPM
• Deep house: 120–125 BPM
• Tech house: 125–128 BPM

All twenty genres on one axis, with 113 BPM marked: the BPM chart.

The amapiano drum pattern, bar by bar

To program it in a DAW: set 112 or 113 BPM and 16ths with about 56 % swing, and put the same swing on every part, the log drum included. Kick on each beat, soft and round rather than punchy. Shaker on every 16th, louder on the beat. Clap or snare, where a track has one, on two and four. Then the log drum, starting just after the beat and never on it. Producers argue over the kick: RouteNote's guide programs four on the floor, EDMProd writes that amapiano usually avoids it. Both happen; what amapiano never does is let the kick drive. The log drum does.

Amapiano BPM, track by track

The sources agree on the middle and differ at the edges: Splice 110 to 115, Roland 108 to 115, Loopcloud 108 to 115, RouteNote 105 to 115, the Recording Academy 110 to 120. If you just need a number for a new session, 112.

What makes it amapiano

• The log drum. Not a real drum: a synthesized, pitched, woody bass that imitates a log drum and plays the bass line in syncopated notes. Kabza De Small credits MDU aka TRP with finding the sound. Club tracks often layer a sine sub under it for weight.
• The piano. Mostly electric piano, in minor seventh and ninth chords, four chords on a loop; RouteNote names A minor, G minor and C♯ minor as common keys. Melodies go on bell plucks or marimba over long pads; RouteNote's example loop is C♯m–F♯m–B–E.
• Shakers and percussion. Constant shakers, congas, bongos and rimshots off the beat.
• Samples and foley. Jazz chords chopped, street noise and chatter under the beat (EDMProd).
• Vocals and length. Chants and verses in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho and English, and tracks built for DJs: an intro of 30 s to a minute, a drop around 2 minutes, a second drop around 4, out by 6 or 7 (RouteNote).

Where amapiano comes from

How to pronounce amapiano

Ah-mah-pee-AH-no, the stress on the fourth syllable. Ama- is the isiZulu plural prefix: amapiano, the pianos.

Gauteng, mid-2010s

From the townships of Gauteng, South Africa, around Pretoria and Johannesburg, in the mid-2010s; the Recording Academy puts its birth around 2014, and which city came first is still argued. Producers on cheap laptops mixed deep house, jazz, kwaito and gqom. The songs that carried it out, as the Recording Academy lists them: De Mogul SA's "Oe Batla Kae" (2017), Kabza De Small's "Umshove" (2018), Semi Tee's "Labantwana Ama Uber" and DJ Maphorisa and Kabza De Small's "Vula Vala" (2019), Focalistic and Vigro Deep's "Ke Star" (2020), and TitoM and Yuppe's "Tshwala Bam" (2024, later remixed with Burna Boy). Tyla's "Water" won the first Grammy for Best African Music Performance in 2024. By reach, the biggest amapiano song so far is "Water": it topped Billboard's U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart, entered the Hot 100 and won that Grammy (Recording Academy, 2024). As of 2026, the names most often given as the genre's biggest are Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa, together the Scorpion Kings, with Focalistic, DBN Gogo, Kelvin Momo and Uncle Waffles. Spotify counted amapiano's first 100 million streams in 2020 and 855 million by mid-2024.

Is amapiano afrobeats? Is it afro house?

• Afrobeats is Nigerian and Ghanaian pop at 100 to 115 BPM, built on a syncopated pop beat, not a log drum. Nigerian artists borrow amapiano often, and the Nigerian take has a name, afropiano; that is why the two get mixed up.
• Is Tyla afrobeats? Tyla is South African, and "Water" is amapiano with pop and R&B in it. She calls her sound popiano.
• Afro house, huge in South Africa too, runs 120 to 123 with the kick driving. Mixing from amapiano at 112 into it is +7 to 10 %, at or past the end of a turntable's ±8 % pitch fader: do it in a breakdown, or walk the tempo up over a few tracks.
• What BPM are dance songs? Most club music runs 115 to 135: house 115–130, techno 125–135. Amapiano sits under it at 110–115, which is why it feels slow.
• Which genre is amapiano? A house style of its own. Its offshoots include private school piano, quantum sound and s'gija in South Africa, bique in Mozambique and bongopiano in Tanzania.

Then make something of it

The door opens Brumm, a club track with a beat and a bass, with this groove's low end in it. The app runs between 90 and 150 BPM, so a tempo outside goes in at half or double, or at the nearest end when neither fits. No account, no upload: it travels inside the link. Hum a line over it, and it becomes an instrument.

Nothing is recorded: no microphone, only your taps, counted in the browser. The groove's sounds are the app's own samples, fetched when you tap Play. How the site counts visits.