BPM: Dirty Little Secret

Give tempo and time signature

The speed at which music is played/performed is expressed as beats-per-minute or BPM. The more BPM, the faster the music goes. Most music uses the same BPM range as the human heartbeat: 60-140 bpm.
A base of 16 means that the bar is divided in 16 parts of length 1/16. The most common bases are 4, 8, 16 or 32. Use base 12 or 24 if you also want calculations for triplets.
This is also used in "Quantising": the process of snapping notes to the nearest beat subdivision.

Quick BPM overview

Beats per minute
104.9 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
26.2
Length of 1 beat
0.572 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.2879 sec
Beats per second
1.7483 Hz

Fractions for base 16

These are some common fractions (handy for setting delays, LFO and modulation parameters)


1/16
1/16
6.25%
143 ms
6.99 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
286 ms
3.50 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
429 ms
2.33 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
572 ms
1.75 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
715 ms
1.40 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
858 ms
1.17 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 001 ms
0.999 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 144 ms
0.874 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 287 ms
0.777 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 430 ms
0.699 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 573 ms
0.636 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 716 ms
0.583 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
1 859 ms
0.538 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 002 ms
0.500 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 145 ms
0.466 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 288 ms
0.437 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
3 432 ms
0.291 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
4 576 ms
0.219 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
6 864 ms
0.146 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
9 152 ms
0.109 Hz

How to use this page

If you have a 135 BPM song, and you want a phase modulation of 4 beats: that is 1.778 sec
If you have a 98 BPM song in a measure of 3/4, and you want to know how long 8 bars is: 14.7 sec
If you have a 128 BPM song, and you want an audio delay of 2/3 of a beat: this is 313 ms
If you have a 80 BPM song, and you want an LFO of 5/4 of a bar: this is 4687.5 ms

Musical genres

These are some popular modern music genres with typical BPM speeds.

Slow dub/reggae
75 BPM
Fast dub/reggae
90 BPM
Deep house
96 BPM
Slow house
120 BPM
Electro house
130 BPM
Trance
135 BPM
Dubstep
140 BPM
Hard house
145 BPM
Jungle
160 BPM
Drum&Bass
175 BPM
Gabber
190 BPM

Music calculators & converters

Beats-per-minute
Convert BPM to Hz, bar length, fractions
Audio delay
Calculate audio delay length in msec
Music Frequency
Convert pitch to musical note and wavelength
Song length
Calculate song length from BPM
Music Scale
Generate scales with frequencies
Tap your tempo
Tap to find the BPM of a song or a heartbeat