Key and tempo are the two decisions you make before anything else in a session, and both have strong genre conventions. You can break them, but you should break them on purpose. Here is the cheat sheet, genre by genre.
Tempo and key by genre
- Trap: 130 to 160 BPM, felt in half-time. Minor keys dominate, with F minor, C# minor, and A minor everywhere. Harmonic minor for the darker end.
- Lo-fi: 70 to 90 BPM. Major keys with jazz extensions, or the relative minor. C, F, and Eb major are comfortable piano keys, which matters in a piano-led genre.
- House: 120 to 128 BPM, with 124 as the modern default. Minor 7th territory: A minor, F minor, G minor.
- Deep house: 118 to 124 BPM. Same minor bias, more 9th chords, slightly slower reads as deeper.
- EDM / festival: 126 to 132 BPM, big-room drops often in F minor or G minor because those sit well on a huge sub while leaving headroom.
- Pop: 95 to 120 BPM. The most major-key genre left, but check the top 40: half of it is minor now too. Write for the vocalist's range first, key second.
- R&B / neo-soul: 60 to 95 BPM. Anything with 9ths and 11ths; Eb minor and Db major show up constantly because they sit beautifully under vocals.
- Reggaeton: 88 to 100 BPM, dembow rhythm. Almost exclusively minor: A minor, B minor, C# minor.
- Cinematic / orchestral: free tempo, but 70 to 110 covers most cues. D minor is the film-score cliché for a reason: it is the cello's happy place.
Why minor keys win almost everywhere
Streaming-era production leans dark: minor harmony flatters 808s and subs, reads as emotional at low volumes on phone speakers, and leaves space for bright melodic hooks to contrast. If you are unsure, start minor. The exceptions are piano house, some pop, and lo-fi, where major-with-extensions is the sound.
Two practical tricks
- Pick keys that fit your bass patch. Most 808s and analog-style basses have a sweet spot between E1 and A1. Choose a key whose root lands there and the low end mixes itself.
- Half-time math. A 140 BPM trap beat and a 70 BPM R&B beat can share the same MIDI melody. Tempo is a frame, not a property of the notes, which is exactly why MIDI files travel across genres so well.
Skip the transposing entirely
One reason we built Key Sync into FFUNK: you set your working key once, and every chord progression and melody you download arrives already transposed to it. Browse any genre collection, from trap to house to R&B, audition in the browser, and the file lands in your key. Try it on the 7-day free trial.
