does tempo matter?

[lem]

I have found my music tastes getting slower and slower recently. I have began to produce at slower tempos and I am feeling much more free with grooves and sounds. Some things just don't work at certain tempos.

When I am out dancing I am moreso dancing to the vibes and the weirdness rather than the beat.
Tempo isn't really as much of an issue as energy. My last gig was at about 118 bpm and somebody commented that it sounded so energetic.

[simonb]

My preference of tempo on the dance floor is 170bpm Jungle, House/Techno of any sort just doesn't do it for me. For home listening it's a complete reversal.

I'm the opposite, I struggle to dance to 170bpm jungle, never figured out how. House/techno is a nice tempo for dancing.

[lem]

My preference of tempo on the dance floor is 170bpm Jungle, House/Techno of any sort just doesn't do it for me. For home listening it's a complete reversal.

I'm the opposite, I struggle to dance to 170bpm jungle, never figured out how. House/techno is a nice tempo for dancing.

Dance to the clap and bass rather than the kick and hats.... if that makes sense!
It always takes me a while to get my groove before I can start dancing to other styles.

[danbolton]

i cant tell from samples if a track sounds good pitched up or down. so i wont buy it. maybe after i listend to the track in a club, i buy it later, but from samples a track thats below or at 120 ... must be an exceptional track.

thankfully some record stores (decks for example) have a really helpful feature which actually lets you speed up and slow down the samples

[Dal-Tech]

Back in the 90s a lot of techno was too fast.

[tone-def]

Back in the 90s a lot of techno was too fast.

Agreed.

For me once things start getting faster I prefer stuff that's more 2-step or broke beat.

[pafufta816]

my preference for techno/house is either 120-124 or 130, for some reason 125-129 doesn't keep my attention as strongly. i enjoy 140 techno, but it is usually very dark, noisey, industrial tones and distortion and such (some black dog tracks, and sgnl_fltr do this style really well). 140 is too fast though, and the intense nature of it means i only listen to it for short periods of time. i love dubtechno and deep house at 100-120, it's just the perfect speed for the grooves.

i don't dj, but i do like to make mixes by editing tracks together. when i do this i tend to pick one song that the rest of the mix is based on, 120 is easiest. i pitch tracks so that every whole note is one second long, very very easy when doing complicated edits or tempo-locked effects.

[Direkt]

i usually stick to stuff between 118-130