I'm trying to understand how exactly we calculate tempos and how we assign their Italian names in written music. I've searched before asking, but I'm not 100% sure I've understood everything correctly, so I'd like someone to confirm or correct me in simple terms.
Say I have a melody that's composed of eighths and no pauses. In 1 minute, exactly 150 eighths are played. The time signature is 6/8.
- I assume that in this case the appropriate symbol (if written on a sheet) would be Q = 75 (or 1/8th = 150). Is this right?
- In the above example, is the BPM equal to 75 or 150? Is the conversion (from, say, 150 eigthths to X BPM) independent of the time signature or not? And if not, how?
- Wikipedia has a list of tempo ranges in BPM with their respective Italian names. Given the answer of question 2, if a different song is at, say, 135 BPM, is it always vivace or does this depend on the time signature?