Tempo & rhythm
Half-time
Half-time is a groove that feels half as fast as it counts — the snare lands every other bar instead of every other beat. Drum & bass written at 174 BPM is felt, and often detected, at 87.
Measured in our catalog
46,690 of 443,307 tracks with a detected tempo (10.5%) are stored below 95 BPM, and 81.9% of drum & bass is among them.
The shelf at 87 BPM holds 10,880 tracks against 173 at 174 — 63× as many, on a tempo almost nobody writes at. That is not a fact about music. It is a fact about detection, and we correct for it before publishing any genre tempo.
| Half | Tracks | Double | Tracks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 87 BPM | 10,880 | 174 BPM | 173 |
| 70 BPM | 2,883 | 140 BPM | 17,961 |
| 65 BPM | 1,165 | 130 BPM | 23,398 |
| 75 BPM | 1,462 | 150 BPM | 9,159 |
Measured on 11 August 2026 across public tracks with a detected BPM, as stored — no correction applied to these counts. Method: how we correct half-time BPM detection.
Why it matters
Half-time is where tempo data goes wrong, and it goes wrong at scale. Automatic BPM detection locks onto the pulse it can hear, so a genre built on a half-time backbeat gets filed an octave down — and every library, every playlist and every "similar tempo" search inherits the error.
It is also a real creative move. Dropping into a half-time section halves the perceived energy without touching the tempo, which is why it survives in genres that never sit near 87 BPM.
In Mixgraph
Genre tempo pages publish a corrected median rather than the stored one, and every tempo page whose inventory is an octave off says so.
Frequently asked
Why does my drum & bass show up as 87 BPM?+
Because the detector locked onto the half-time pulse. 81.9% of the drum & bass in this catalog is stored below 95 BPM. The track is at 174; the number is counting the backbeat.
Is half-time the same as double-time?+
They are the same relationship read from opposite ends. A track stored at 87 and felt at 174 is half-time from one side and double-time from the other — which side you call it depends on which number you started from.
Can you mix a half-time track with a full-tempo one?+
Yes — that is the point of the octave. A track at 87 and one at 174 share a beat grid exactly, so they beatmatch without any pitch adjustment at all.
Related terms
Double-time
Double-time is the mirror of half-time: a groove counted at one tempo and felt at twice the rate. A 70 BPM beat played as 140 is the same record, counted differently, and mixes on the same grid.
BPM
BPM — beats per minute — counts how many beats land in sixty seconds. It is the first number a DJ checks, because two tracks have to agree on tempo before anything else about them matters.
Beatmatching
Beatmatching is lining up two tracks so their beats land together — matching the tempo, then nudging the phase until the kicks coincide. It is the base skill every other mixing technique sits on top of.
Explore: 87 BPM tracks · 174 BPM tracks · Drum & bass BPM · All DJ terms