Video editors will tell you that viewers instinctively know when an edit works or doesn’t, even if they lack the terminology or expertise to express why. Whether or not you’ve considered “BPM” (beats per minute) in your own editing, there’s a good chance you intuitively know the impact it has on the tone and feel of a video project. If an exciting video needs “faster” music or a romantic scene needs a “slower” theme, you probably don’t mean that the songs need to end sooner or last longer. You’re referring to the pace of the music, and that’s where BPM comes in.
What is music BPM?
Not to be confused with the medical term to do with blood pressure, BPM is a count of the number of beats a song has per minute. As in this hilarious example from The Office, if you click your fingers along to “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, you’ll end up clicking much more than if you clicked to the beginning of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. This is because “Stayin’ Alive” has a faster pace and a higher BPM.
While a song’s BPM will be a specific number, generally between 20 and 200, songs with similar BPMs can be grouped into categories referred to as tempos. On Artlist, you can search for songs with a particular BPM if your project needs one. For example, if you need music to pulse in time with a ticking clock, search for a song with exactly 60 BPM. While tempos do have classical Italian terms (lento is slow, andante is medium, allegro is fast etc.), on Artlist, these categories are simply slow, medium-slow, medium, medium-fast and fast.
Choosing the right BPM for you
Once you open up Artlist, you can head to the BPM dropdown option just above your current song selection.
From this point, you can select your BPM range in a couple of different ways. First, you can select the tempo you want your song to have, automatically filtering your selection with a single click. Your tempo options (with their BPM ranges) are:
- Slow (20-70 BPM)
- Medium-slow (70-90 BPM)
- Medium (90-110 BPM)
- Medium-fast (110-130 BPM)
- Fast (130-200 BPM)
We’ll take a listen to these tempos in Artlist songs very soon.
If you need a song with a very specific BPM, you can use the slider to find it, or search within a numerical range. Alternatively, if you want to experiment with different tempos, you can use these tools to search for a broad range of songs with varied BPMs. These tools are flexible and let you do what’s best for your project.
To hear the difference between these tempos, take a listen to the Artlist songs below:
Slow (from 20 – 70 BPM)
Medium-slow (70 – 90 BPM)
Medium (90 – 110 BPM)
Medium-fast (110 – 130 BPM)
Fast (130 – 200 BPM)
Why BPM is important for your background music
Now you know what BPM is and its impact on song choice, so let’s take a look at how best to use it in an edit. Below are 2 examples of videos with very different subject matters and completely different approaches to BPM.
Example 1: Fast tempo
In this first example, a story from the Artlist stock footage catalog (“Boxing Match“ by LACOFILMS) is in need of a lively, exciting edit. By filtering for the Medium-fast tempo option, and then by theme (Sports & Fitness) and genre (Hip Hop), you can find “Damage” by Nyron, a song that would work perfectly for a story about boxing.
When editing to this song, you can use its pace to give your cuts a rhythm, but it’s also a good idea to break that rhythm regularly to avoid a predictable edit. It’s not all about cuts, so you can also keep up the energy by making punctuated action within the footage fall in line with the beat (e.g., a punch landing on a beat).
Example 2: Slow tempo
In this second example, the beautiful underwater footage shot in Yucatan from Wind Collective needed a peaceful, calming edit. By searching for a Slow tempo and then filtering further by theme (Nature), you can find “Chemtrails” by Sémø.
Example 3: “Wrong” tempo
To really show the impact that pace and song choice make on a video, take a glimpse at what these examples would look like if you keep everything else the same but swap their BPMs around.
While there are a few moments that work in both cases, these videos mostly feel hard to watch: the subject matter and the music leave you wanting 2 different things from the edit. Sometimes, however, the obvious choice isn’t always the best one, so let’s discuss some other tips for choosing the right BPM for your own video.
Tips for choosing the right BPM for your video
Here are a few tips to keep in mind for trying to choose the best background music for your videos.
Use BPM in combination with other filters on Artlist
It’s not quite as simple as choosing a fast-paced song for exciting scenes and a slower song for underwater scenes. Fast-paced music can be stressful, happy or scary, while slow-paced music can be relaxing, romantic or scary.
On its own, searching by BPM will get you a song with the right pace for your video, but try filtering by theme or genre to find songs a little further outside the box that might be ideal for your scene. This will also speed up the process of finding that perfect song by narrowing your options and limiting the number of less suitable tracks you’ll listen to before you find the one you’re looking for.
Sometimes an unconventional BPM is the best choice
While visuals with faster action usually need a quicker tempo and vice-versa, exploring whether an unconventional BPM choice could work for your own project is good. Sometimes it’s the right choice to subvert expectations: a strong contrast between the music and the action of the visuals can really work, especially when the other qualities of the song complement the scene.
A good example of a low BPM working with a very intense edit would be the following scene from Interstellar. It has a man ejecting his own spaceship into a black hole (it doesn’t get much more intense than that), but the BPM sits at just 59.
Though the tempo is slow, the music has other qualities that make it particularly intense: the volume and the use of a full orchestra. Meanwhile, the slow tempo helps make ejection-into-a-black-hole begin to feel inevitable, and helps you feel Coop’s calmness as he accepts his fate.
To take an example on the opposite end of the spectrum, watch the incredible music video for LCD Soundsystem’s “Oh Baby,” directed by Rian Johnson. This song has a whopping 169 beats per minute. While it does start off with several very quick cuts and lots of fast-paced action (in this case, mathematical calculation counts as fast-paced action), the majority of the video has long takes and isn’t exactly action-packed. But watch it, and it works perfectly.
Just as the scene from Interstellar relies on other musical qualities to enhance its intensity (rather than just BPM), “oh baby” has long, sustained vocals and synths which contrast nicely with the rapid underlying beat. The result is a song that works just as well with quick cuts as it does with long ones, allowing for faster action when needed and more thoughtful storytelling when not.
Wrapping up
Now that BPM is well and truly part of your editor’s vocabulary and that you’ve seen the impact it can make on a video, put it to good use in your own projects and start making tempo work for you.
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