Trap BPM

How fast, and who says so

Where the two sources overlap: 130–176 BPM. Each in its own words:

• Wikipedia, Trap music: 100–176 BPM
• Native Instruments, How to make a trap beat (2022): 130–200 BPM

The groove on this page

Trap is written fast and felt slow. The groove above plays at 144: the clap hits once a bar, on beat three, so it nods like 72. The speed lives in the hi-hats: 8ths for a bar, then a beat of 32nds, one 8th and a four-hit roll, then the hats stop for two beats, with only the clap and one open hat in the gap. Under it a driven 808 holds G1 (49 Hz) for over a beat, steps up to B♭1 and down to F1, and doubles as the kick: there is no separate kick drum in this loop.

On this page: the app's Dry kit at 144 BPM, straight 16ths, with the Driven 808 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

• Breakbeat: 110–175 BPM
• Psytrance: 138–148 BPM
• Hardstyle: about 150 BPM
• Footwork: about 160 BPM

All twenty genres on one axis, with 144 BPM marked: the BPM chart.

Trap BPM by style, with songs

The project tempo first, the felt tempo second. Song tempos are as Dave Tompkins' DJ library lists them (a DJ's catalogue hosted at the University of Waterloo, tempos measured with MixMeister; checked October 2026), unless another source is named.

Wikipedia’s trap article gives the whole span as 100 to 176 BPM, written 50 (100) to 88 (176), with a typical beat around 140. The pad above counts 130 to 176 as trap (and 65 to 88 as its half-time count), where Wikipedia and Native Instruments overlap; a slow beat at 127 reads as below it. Below 120 the hats lose their rush; above 170 it starts to sound like footwork or drum and bass.

Is trap 140 or 70 BPM?

Both; the DAW decides. Nod with the clap as the backbeat, on the 2 and 4 of a slow bar, and you count 70. Count the quarter notes the 808 and the grid are written on, every other 8th-note hat, and you get 140. Producers set 140 because at 70 a 32nd-note roll would have to be a 64th, and step sequencers don’t show that by default: at 140 a 16th lasts 107 ms and a 32nd 54 ms, enough for rolls and triplets. Song databases split the same way. Tompkins’ library lists “Bad and Boujee” at 127 and its published tempo at 64, “Mask Off” at 150 and 75. The pad above takes either count: tap 72 and it reads the half-time count of 144.

Is 140 BPM fast? As a pulse, yes: faster than pop (80 to 104 on these pages) or house (115 to 130). In trap you hear 70, a slow head nod, which is why the same number feels fast in techno and slow in trap. The same goes for 200: in trap that is a 100 BPM feel.

What is a good BPM for trap beats?

Start at 140. Go down to 120 to 135 for melodic and sung trap, where the vocal needs room between the hits. Go up to 150 to 170 for hard beats and fast flows. Rappers pick beats by where their flow sits, so a producer selling beats lists the tempo in the title, and that number is nearly always the double one.

Trap drum pattern

1. Set 140. Clap or snare on beat three of every bar: on the 3 and the 7 if you count 8ths at 70.
2. 808 on the one, then wherever the rhythm wants it, with a gap before the clap. It is the kick and the bass at once, so tune it to the key (808 tuner).
3. Hats in 8ths; break them into 16ths, 16th triplets (71 ms at 140) and 32nd rolls at the end of a phrase.
4. An open hat or a perc on an offbeat now and then. Leave whole beats empty: a beat of silence before the drop does more than another roll.

The 808 in trap

The name comes from the Roland TR-808, a drum machine of 1980 whose long, tuned kick became trap’s bass. Producers stretch its decay to a second or more and play it as a bass line, with slides between notes. It has to be in key: G1 is 49 Hz, F1 43.7 Hz, B♭1 58.3 Hz. Tune it by ear in your DAW (in FL Studio, in Ableton) or hum the line and let voice to bassline write it.

Where trap comes from

Trap is Atlanta hip-hop from the 1990s and 2000s, named after the trap house where drugs were sold. T.I.’s album Trap Muzik (2003) gave it a name; producers Shawty Redd, DJ Toomp and Zaytoven gave it its sound, and Lex Luger’s 808s and fast hats on Waka Flocka Flame’s Flockaveli (2010) set the template (Wikipedia, “Trap music”). Next to boom-bap hip hop at 85 to 95, trap is written faster and felt slower: 140 on the grid, 70 in the head. Metro Boomin and the 808 Mafia’s Southside carried it through the 2010s, when it became the sound of the US charts; Chicago drill came out of it in 2012, and EDM producers took it to the festivals.

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.