BPM: Everything S Here And Nothing S Lost

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
127.5 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
31.9
Length of 1 beat
0.4706 sec
Length of 1 bar
1.8824 sec
Beats per second
2.125 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
8.50 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
235 ms
4.25 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
353 ms
2.83 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
471 ms
2.13 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
588 ms
1.70 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
706 ms
1.42 Hz

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

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

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 059 ms
0.944 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 176 ms
0.850 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 294 ms
0.773 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 412 ms
0.708 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
1 529 ms
0.654 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
1 647 ms
0.607 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
1 765 ms
0.567 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
1 882 ms
0.531 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
2 824 ms
0.354 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
3 765 ms
0.266 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
5 647 ms
0.177 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
7 529 ms
0.133 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