BPM: No Complaints

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
126.8 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
31.7
Length of 1 beat
0.4732 sec
Length of 1 bar
1.8927 sec
Beats per second
2.1133 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
118 ms
8.45 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
237 ms
4.23 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
355 ms
2.82 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
473 ms
2.11 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
591 ms
1.69 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
710 ms
1.41 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
828 ms
1.21 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
946 ms
1.06 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 065 ms
0.939 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 183 ms
0.845 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 301 ms
0.768 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 420 ms
0.704 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
1 538 ms
0.650 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
1 656 ms
0.604 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
1 774 ms
0.564 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
1 893 ms
0.528 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
2 839 ms
0.352 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
3 785 ms
0.264 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
5 678 ms
0.176 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
7 571 ms
0.132 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
Fast dub/reggae
Deep house
Slow house
Electro house
Trance
Dubstep
Hard house
Jungle
Drum&Bass
Gabber

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