The 15th century dances borrowed the majority of their steps from the basse danze, although the balli showed in general a greater variation in types of steps and tempi than the basse danze did.

In fact, this appears to be about the only dividing line between the basse danze and the balli -- although the term “bassa danza” should indicate that the entire dance was done in bassadanza (6/4) time (which is the case for all of the Burgundian basse danses), in fact only the simplest basse danze are done entirely in 6/4 and some of them have saltarello and other sequences throughout them. The “default” misura for bassa danza is, however, 6/4, and for every bassa danza the vast majority of the steps are done in that time.

For the balli, there is no “default” time, and in all cases the music or the choreographic descriptions in the text need to be consulted fairly carefully in order to determine in what tempo each section of the ballo is done.