Online metronome · Free · No sign-up
Drum & bass and jungle live here. 174 BPM is the genre’s centre of gravity, with most releases falling between 172 and 176, and a broken breakbeat rolling over a half-time 87 BPM pulse.
Beats per minute
174
Press Space to start and stop · ↑ ↓ to nudge off 174 · or
The tempo
A beat every 0.34 seconds is about as fast as dance music gets before it stops being danceable. What makes it work is the split: the drums are chopped at 174 while the bassline and the body of the track move at 87, so the music feels urgent and relaxed at the same time. That double reading is also why tempo detectors so often report 87 for a drum & bass track.
Where you hear it
Wondering whether a particular track is 174 BPM? Tap along with it and compare, or let the MagicBPM app listen and tell you.
Practice note: Chop breaks at 174 but write the bass at 87. If a bassline sounds cluttered, it is usually because it is following the drums instead of the half-time pulse.
Presets
Every one opens the metronome already running at that BPM.
Need something in between? The full metronome covers 40 to 220 BPM.
MagicBPM for iPhone and Android
The app pairs the same metronome with a real-time BPM detector that hears the music around you, so you can lift a tempo off a track and practice to it straight away.
Good to know
Very fast on the surface, with a half-time pulse at 87 underneath. A beat lands every 0.345 seconds, so one bar of 4/4 lasts 1.379 seconds and a three-minute song runs to about 130 bars. Press Play above to hear it.
174 BPM is very fast, at the top of Vivace and on the edge of Presto. It is roughly three beats a second, and exactly double the 87 BPM half-time pulse it is usually felt at.
Drum & bass, jungle and liquid, typically 172 to 176; Breakbeat editing and chopped amen breaks; Half-time writing, where the bass moves at 87. The list is a guide rather than a rule: tempo varies within every genre.
This page opens already set to 174 BPM, so press Play or hit the spacebar. To move off it, drag the slider, type a number into the BPM box, or use the arrow keys to nudge a beat at a time.
Measuring instead of setting? Use the tap tempo tool to find a song’s BPM.
