Almost everything I play is in that 80-150 bpm category as well. I used to always try to play fast, and I couldn't for the life of me. I was also into trying to get more limb control...and well I thought at first I was going slow...at like 100 bpms. Being told to practice slow my whole life, that seemed like a decent tempo to start at. Well I had been practicing this Rhand Lhand Rfoot Lfoot pattern, Cycling diddles through it and I couldn't for the life of me play it. So one evening I was sitting there baked outta my mind wondering why I had such a hard time with this stuff...I had recently become slightly fascinated in wing chun/tai chi and qigong martial arts...and using those principles where you want to stay very relaxed through all the motions and go slow, I decided to try to exaggerate my strokes and play at i think it was like 20 bpm...well after a few hours I was finally playing it up at like maybe 50 bpms, and I practiced that started at 20 bpm for a few night and i think eventually got up to 80 bpm or so before I lost interest( i have a tendency to lose interest in things quick).
Well ever since proving to myself that i could play these things I once thought impossible, I have always started at SLOW bpms whenever i think something is very difficult.
It gives you time to internalize it. I was always told if you can say it, you can play it. And from what I've found it's very very true. Eventually i got myself to start counting EVERYTHING in practice(this is after like 10 years of not counting). Mike Johnston made a video on something similar to this, I'll see if i can find it.
He was saying all these students were coming to him and going "can you teach me to play faster?" and after awhile of not understanding why nobody was progressing he asked some of his students to play as fast as they can with 1 hand. He noticed most of them were just as fast, and some even faster...and then when he asked them to play a paradiddle as fast as they could, they were at half speed at least. He realized they did not have the paradiddle truly internalized.
The other thing, is playing really slowly, and repetitively, really helps me to memorize it. I'd always had a harder time memorizing drum parts. I could memorize a 10 minute long song on guitar, but you asked me to play something like that if it had more than maybe 5 or 6 parts in it and i'd mix them up and down and backwards and be totally lost.
from what i've read Alan Dawson would have his students play rudiments from VERY slow, to as fast as they could, and back down again, gradually. The idea was so that you could get used to playing the rudiment at any given tempo within your speed. Try it and tap your foot to it. Though I find my feet can't keep up with my hands a lot of times.
I think after awhile as you progress you become more capable of starting at higher tempos. Playing slow is good but I think starting very slow (where it is almost hard to keep the timing) and gradually increasing the speed until it is hard to keep the time and holding it there for a few bars and then slowly lowering it back down again,has helped my hands more than anything...
One day I'll get around to using my feet hopefully...So much to practice, so little time
