BPM (beats per minute)

Theory Things William Wieland

If you don’t have a metronome or are on stage and can’t use a metronome, how can you remember tempos?

Use a clock or watch: 60	— 1 beat per second (“one thousand one, one thousand two,...”)
120	— 2 beats per second (Many marches are 120 or close to 120.)
180	— 3 beats per second

Many musicians associate a particular tempo with a particular recording. “Happy Birthday” probably has a different tempo every time you hear it, but a recording is always the same. BPM Database — Lists thousands of recorded songs and their tempo markings. Here are tempos of several famous hit songs with a memory tip for each:   111 — Queen “Another One Bites the Dust” — Sing “1, 1, 1” along with the bass line. 156 — Queen “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” — Sounds like Elvis, who was no. 1 in ’56. You need to choose songs that you know really, really well. (Memory tips are also helpful.)

After you have learned a half dozen tempos or more, you can get very close to others by thinking a little faster or slower than one you know well.