Dubstep BPM

How fast, and who says so

Where the two sources overlap: 135–142 BPM. Each in its own words:

• Wikipedia, Dubstep: 132–142 BPM
• Orphiq, BPM Chart by Genre (2026): 135–145 BPM

The groove on this page

The groove here is two bars at 140: the kick on the one in the first bar and on the and of one in the second, the snare on beat three in both, hats on the eighths and a few soft hits, with a sub bass in G under it. One snare a bar is the whole trick. It leaves the bar empty enough for the bass, and it is why a room at 140 moves like a room at 70.

On this page: the app's Deep kit at 140 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

• Techno: 125–135 BPM
• Trance: 130–150 BPM
• Breakbeat: 110–175 BPM
• Psytrance: 138–148 BPM

All twenty genres on one axis, with 140 BPM marked: the BPM chart.

Dubstep: 140 or 70 BPM?

Both, and they are the same thing. Dubstep is written at 140 with one snare per bar, on beat three. A bar at 140 lasts 1,714 ms, which is two beats at 70, so the snare falls exactly on beats two and four of a 70 count: a slow backbeat under hats that keep the 140. Producers set the project to 140; DJ software and BPM counters read 140 or 70 depending on what they lock to. Count every beat, every second hat in this groove, and this page's pad reads about 140; tap the kick and snare and it reads about 70 and calls it the half-time count (the groove stops at 105, the bottom of this page's buttons).

Is dubstep always 140 BPM? Nearly. Wikipedia puts it at 132 to 142 with most releases at 140, which is why the scene, grime with it, calls the tempo simply "140". The exceptions sit at the edges: early tracks sometimes at 138, much of the heavier riddim and tearout of the 2020s at 150, post-dubstep at about 130 (Wikipedia), and lately some producers trying tearout drops as slow as 125, a trend YouTube producers call "the new meta".

Dubstep BPM by style

The core range and post-dubstep are Wikipedia's; brostep, riddim, deathstep, melodic dubstep, chillstep and drumstep follow the subgenre answers on Quora.

How many BPM is riddim?

Riddim is made at 140, like the rest of dubstep; the heavier American riddim of the 2020s often at 150. Is dubstep the same as riddim? Riddim is a strand of it, named by the British producer Jakes around 2012 (Wikipedia): short, repetitive bass riffs, triplet percussion and a lot of space. On a 140 grid a triplet eighth lasts 142.9 ms: that is the riddim bounce.

The dubstep drum pattern

Kick on the one, snare or clap on three: on a 16-step grid that is the kick on step 1 and the clap on step 9. The rest is variation. The groove on this page moves the second bar's kick to the and of one:

Common changes: a second kick before the snare (kick on steps 1, 7 and 11 with the clap on 9, the variant BPM Tap draws), hats in triplets for riddim, or a shuffled shaker for the UK sound, as in EDMProd's 2025 walkthrough, which puts one of Ableton's shuffle grooves on it. Claps and rimshots suit the deep sound; big layered snares suit brostep.

The wobble: LFO rates at 140 BPM

The wobble, or wub, is a low-frequency oscillator on a bass synth's filter cutoff, volume or distortion, synced to a note value (Wikipedia). At 140 the synced rates are:

Automate the rate from one value to the next inside a bar and you have the talking bass of brostep. Under it sits a sine sub low in the key: the groove on this page plays G1 at 49.0 Hz and B flat 1 at 58.3 Hz; EDMProd's walkthrough writes in E minor, where E1 is 41.2 Hz. Dubstep leans on minor keys and the Phrygian mode. What instruments are used in dubstep? A sub bass, a mid-bass synth for the wobble, a kick, a clap or snare, hats and shakers, and the reverb and delay it took from dub.

Dubstep songs to tap along with

• Skream, "Midnight Request Line" (2005): the grime-edged anthem of the early sound.
• Digital Mystikz, "Anti War Dub" (2006): Mala's half-step drums and a sub you feel more than hear.
• Burial, "Archangel" (2007): crackle, cut-up vocals, garage drums slowed into dubstep.
• Benga and Coki, "Night" (2007): the crossover that took 140 out of the clubs.
• Magnetic Man, "I Need Air" (2010): UK number 10.
• Flux Pavilion, "I Can't Stop" (2010): melodic dubstep's best-known drop.
• Skrillex, "Bangarang" (2011): brostep at its biggest.

Tap the pad along with any of them: tap every beat and it reads 140, the kick and the snare and it reads 70.

Where dubstep came from

South London, early 2000s: a darker, sparser offshoot of UK garage's 2-step. From 2001 the FWD>> night and the pirate station Rinse FM played it; the Croydon record shop and label Big Apple and the label Tempa used the word from 2002. Skream, Benga, Digital Mystikz (Mala and Coki) and Loefah defined the 140 sound. Mary Anne Hobbs' "Dubstep Warz" show on BBC Radio 1 in January 2006 took it worldwide, and Burial's "Untrue" and Benga and Coki's "Night" (both 2007) took it beyond the clubs. In 2010 and 2011 American producers led by Skrillex made it louder in the midrange, brostep, and for a while the biggest dance sound in the US.

Dubstep, drum and bass and the other 140s

Are dubstep and drum and bass the same? No. Drum and bass runs at 174 with snares on two and four, felt at 87; dubstep runs at 140 with one snare a bar, felt at 70. Drumstep puts dubstep's drop on drum and bass tempo. Mixing the two takes a cut, not a blend. Inside 140 dubstep has company: grime is MCs over 140 instrumentals, and trap is often made at 140 with the same half-time snare. Its parent, UK garage, runs a little slower. A 16-bar phrase at 140 lasts 27.4 seconds, and when a record lands, the DJ may pull it back to the start: the rewind, a habit from dub sound systems. What genre has 1,000 BPM? Extratone, far past dubstep: the numbers are on techno BPM.

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.