Tempo

The speed at which music is played, usually given as beats per minute or as a descriptive Italian term.

Tempo affects far more than speed: the same progression played slowly becomes a ballad and played quickly becomes a dance, and techniques that work at one tempo may be impossible at another. Notation gives descriptive terms such as allegro and adagio, or a metronome figure, but in popular music the recording is the reference. Players often discover that a piece they can play perfectly at a slow tempo falls apart when it is taken up to performance speed, which is why practising at tempo matters.

Example: A song logged at a hundred and twenty beats per minute for a click track has its tempo fixed at that figure.

Tempo

See also