Drum and bass BPM

How fast, and who says so

Where the two sources overlap: 160–180 BPM. Each in its own words:

• Wikipedia, Drum and bass: 160–180 BPM
• Soundtrap, How To Find BPM Of A Song (2025): 160–180 BPM

The groove on this page

The groove here is the two-step at 174: kick on the one and on the and of three, snares on two and four, eighth-note hats, three soft hits in the gaps and a sub bass that starts on each kick, G, G, then B flat and F in the second bar. At 174 a bar lasts 1.38 seconds and the snares fall 690 ms apart. Pull it down to 165 with − and it starts to sound like mid-nineties jungle; the roll comes back as you climb to 172.

On this page: the app's Bright kit at 174 BPM, straight 16ths, with the Sub 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

• Psytrance: 138–148 BPM
• Hardstyle: about 150 BPM
• Trap: 130–176 BPM
• Footwork: about 160 BPM

All twenty genres on one axis, with 174 BPM marked: the BPM chart.

Why 174 BPM, and why drum and bass feels like 87

Drum and bass is counted at 174 and danced at 87. The snares land on two and four, 690 ms apart, so they come 87 times a minute: that is the pulse your head nods to, while the hats and the breaks run at 174. Move the snare to beat three and you have halftime drum and bass, which lines up hit for hit with a hip-hop beat at 87, snares on two and four. That is why a soul or hip-hop sample at 87 drops straight into a drum and bass track.

Is drum and bass 170 or 174? Both, and 174 more often. Liquid often sits at 170 to 174, neurofunk and jump up at 174 to 176, and anything from 170 to 176 mixes without a tempo jump anyone hears. If a BPM counter or your DJ software says 87, it locked onto the snares: double it. The tap pad above works the same way: tap the snares and it reads 87, below the range (the groove stops at 130, the bottom of this page's buttons); tap every beat and it reads 174.

Drum and bass BPM by subgenre

Nearly every style sits inside 170 to 176. The drums, the bass sound and the mood tell them apart, not the tempo. Ranges from DNB Academy's subgenre guide (2026), checked against BAP Studio's tempo pages; the names are where to start listening.

What BPM is jungle?

Jungle is drum and bass before the tempo settled. Hardcore and jungle ran at about 150 to 165 BPM in 1992 to 1994 and climbed as producers sped the breaks up further; by 1996 and 1997 the music, now mostly called drum and bass, sat at 170 to 175 (BAP Studio's tempo history). Classic jungle is 160 to 170. Jungle made today usually runs at 170 or more, so it mixes with the rest of a set.

The drum and bass drum pattern

Almost every drum and bass beat is a variation of the two-step: kick on the one and on the and of three, snare on two and four. On a 16-step grid that is kick on steps 1 and 11, snare on 5 and 13, as in the groove on this page:

Each of the other common patterns changes one thing. Step positions for all six as DNB Academy's drum pattern guide (2026) gives them:

The Amen break comes from The Winstons' "Amen, Brother" (1969) and runs at about 136 BPM. Played at 174 on a sampler without time-stretching it is 28 % faster and 4.3 semitones higher, which is part of why old jungle breaks sound so bright. Ghost notes go well below the main snares, and the backbeat stays on two and four: move everything else first.

Mixing drum and bass at 174

Is drum and bass hard to DJ? The tempo is not the hard part; the clock is. A 16-bar phrase at 174 lasts 22 seconds, against 30 at 128, so the next record has to be cued and in time sooner. Tracks come in 16- and 32-bar blocks with a drum intro to mix on, and two drops played on top of each other, the double drop, is a drum and bass DJ's signature. Halftime tracks mix straight in: same tempo, one snare a bar.

Next to other genres: hip-hop at 87 is exactly half: two halftime bars at 174 make one hip-hop bar, snare for snare. What EDM genre is 160 BPM? Footwork and juke, the bottom of jungle, and the start of hardcore. Dubstep at 140, felt at 70, is too far to blend; DJs cut between them, or play drumstep, dubstep's half-time drop at 170 and up. Can drum and bass be 140 or 150 BPM? The pattern works, as producers keep finding, but around 130 to 140 a two-step with a sub under it reads as breakbeat or 2-step garage, and no DJ will mix it next to 174. At 150 to 160 it sounds like 1992 hardcore or early jungle. Above 180 the bass loses its room between the snares, and you are in crossbreed or hardcore, not drum and bass. What genre has 1,000 BPM? Extratone, where the kicks come so fast they fuse into a tone: the numbers are on techno BPM.

Does drum and bass count as EDM? In the wide sense of electronic dance music, yes. As a scene it comes from UK rave, pirate radio and sound systems, not from the American festival wave the word EDM usually means.

Where drum and bass came from

Drum and bass grew out of London's breakbeat hardcore and jungle between 1992 and 1995. Fabio and Grooverider, the two DJs most often called its godfathers, pushed the darker, faster side of hardcore on the radio and at their nights. Jungle peaked in 1994 and 1995 with ragga records such as M-Beat and General Levy's "Incredible" and Shy FX and UK Apachi's "Original Nuttah". The cleaner records that followed took the name drum and bass: Goldie's album "Timeless" (1995), LTJ Bukem's atmospheric side, Ed Rush and Optical's techstep, and Roni Size and Reprazent's "New Forms", which won the Mercury Prize in 1997. By the late 1990s the tempo had settled, and Wikipedia notes most of it has stayed between 170 and 180 since.

The 2000s brought liquid (Calibre, High Contrast, Hospital Records) and the big-room sound of Pendulum's "Hold Your Colour" (2005). Andy C, who co-founded Ram Records in 1992, is the DJ most people name as the genre's biggest. In the 2020s drum and bass is back in the charts with jungle-flavoured pop (PinkPantheress, Nia Archives) and jump up's crowd records, still at 174.

Famous drum and bass songs to tap along with

• Goldie, "Inner City Life" (1994): breaks, strings and Diane Charlemagne's vocal.
• LTJ Bukem, "Horizons" (1995): the atmospheric side, pads over light breaks.
• Roni Size and Reprazent, "Brown Paper Bag" (1997): live double bass over a rolling break.
• Shimon and Andy C, "Body Rock" (2001): Ram Records' dancefloor roller, number one on the UK dance chart.
• Shy FX and T Power, "Shake Ur Body" (2002): the vocal crossover.
• Pendulum, "Tarantula" (2005): dancefloor drum and bass at its 2000s peak.
• Sub Focus, "Rock It" (2009): the big-room bassline of the late 2000s.
• Noisia, "Diplodocus": neurofunk's sound design at its most precise.
• Netsky, "Come Alive" (2012): liquid with a pop vocal.
• Chase and Status with Bou, "Baddadan" (2023): jump up that crossed into the UK charts.

The older records sit lower, the modern ones at or near 174. Tap the pad along with any of them: the reading is your count of the record, not a database's.

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.