UK garage BPM

How fast, and who says so

Both sources settle on about 130 BPM:

• Wikipedia, UK garage: around 130 BPM
• Native Instruments, How to make UK garage music (2023): around 130 BPM

The groove on this page

UK garage at its most recognisable is 2-step: the kicks on two and four of a house bar are taken out, leaving a kick on the one and another an 8th after beat three, and in the second bar one more on the second 16th of beat four, so the groove skips. The clap stays on two and four, the hats shuffle hard, open hats sit on the and of two and four, and the bass answers the kick. MusicRadar's tutorial sets the swing between 50 and 60 % on 16ths; the groove here swings at 60, which puts every second 16th 23 ms late at 132 BPM.

On this page: the app's Shimmer kit at 132 BPM, swing 60 %, with the Garage 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

• House: 115–130 BPM
• Deep house: 120–125 BPM
• Tech house: 125–128 BPM
• Techno: 125–135 BPM

All twenty genres on one axis, with 132 BPM marked: the BPM chart.

Why UK garage sits at 130 BPM

New York and New Jersey garage house ran at about 120 BPM. From 1993 London DJs pushed those records up on the pitch fader; a Technics SL-1200 goes to +8 %, and 120 plus 8 % is 129.6, which is why speed garage was also called "plus eight" (MasterClass). In 1994 DJ EZ played Todd Edwards' "The Praise (God in His Hand)" in a Greenwich club at 130, to bring it closer to the hardcore and jungle tempos of the time (Wikipedia, "UK garage"), and garage house at 130 became speed garage. The voices went up with it, 1.33 semitones at +8 %; producers then pitched and time-stretched them further, into garage's chipmunk vocals.

UK garage, UKG for short, is a British dance music born in the mid-1990s from American garage house. Is 130 BPM fast? For a song, yes: most pop runs 80 to 104 BPM and most hip hop 85 to 95. For a club it is mid-tempo, a step above house's 120 to 128. 140 is the top of garage and the home of dubstep and grime, which grew out of it.

UK garage BPM by style

Speed garage is house at 128 to 135 with jungle's bass and dub effects. Wikipedia puts later garage at 130 to 138. UK funky, which grew out of garage's decline in the mid-2000s, kept the tempo near 130 (Wikipedia, "UK funky") and traded 2-step for four-on-the-floor or syncopated kicks under African and Latin percussion.

The UK garage drum pattern

Start from a house bar: a kick on every beat, the clap on two and four. Take out the kicks on two and four and move one to an 8th after beat three: that is 2-step, the change Wikipedia calls the most radical from speed garage. Then add the swing, which garage overuses: Studio Brootle runs Ableton's SP1200 16 Swing-71 groove at 60 % over everything. Hats short and pitched up, two hits close together to show the swing, a second, quieter snare in the gaps. The first bar of this page's groove, with its bass:

The second bar adds a kick on the second 16th of beat four, which throws the loop back to the one. The bass takes its notes from C♯ minor: C♯ with the kick on the one and again three 16ths later, E with the second kick, F♯ on the and of four; the second bar answers with C♯ and then B. Short notes that lock to the kick and fill the gaps it leaves.

UK garage vs house

Both come from the same New York records. House holds a kick on every beat, mostly at 120 to 128 BPM, with a light shuffle. UK garage runs faster, about 130 to 135, breaks the kick into 2-step, swings far harder, puts a heavy sub-bass under it, and chops and pitches its vocals into rhythm, Todd Edwards' technique. 4×4 garage keeps house's kick and garage's swing and tempo. House BPM has house's own tempos and groove.

Why is it called UK garage?

After the Paradise Garage, the New York club where Larry Levan played from 1977 to 1987. "Garage" came to mean the soulful, gospel-voiced house from New York and New Jersey that clubs like it played. London DJs played those records faster, then made their own, and called them UK garage. The scene grew on Sunday nights, at events like the one at the Frog & Nightgown pub, because at first garage promoters could only hire venues on Sundays, and in the back rooms of jungle raves (Wikipedia).

UK garage songs and artists

The UK number ones: Shanks & Bigfoot's "Sweet Like Chocolate" (1999, the first), Craig David's "Fill Me In" (April 2000), Oxide & Neutrino's "Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty)" (2000), So Solid Crew's "21 Seconds" (August 2001) and Daniel Bedingfield's "Gotta Get Thru This" (2001). Beside them: Artful Dodger and Craig David's "Re-Rewind" (1999), DJ Luck & MC Neat's "A Little Bit of Luck" (1999), Armand van Helden's remix of Sneaker Pimps' "Spin Spin Sugar" (1997), Kelly G's remix of Tina Moore's "Never Gonna Let You Go", one of the first 2-step records, and MJ Cole's "Sincere".

The artists: Todd Edwards, Armand van Helden, DJ EZ, the Dreem Teem, Scott Garcia, Grant Nelson, Wookie, MJ Cole, Zed Bias, Artful Dodger; in the 2010s revival Disclosure ("You & Me" is all 2-step) and AlunaGeorge; from 2019 AJ Tracey's "Ladbroke Grove" (number 3), then Sammy Virji, Interplanetary Criminal, Conducta, Bakey, and the garage in Fred again.., PinkPantheress and Bicep.

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.