BPM: Zhe Mo Duo Nian - Dian Ying Wo Xiang He Ni Zai Yi Qi Cha Qu

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
129.5 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
32.4
Length of 1 beat
0.4633 sec
Length of 1 bar
1.8533 sec
Beats per second
2.1583 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
116 ms
8.63 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
232 ms
4.32 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
347 ms
2.88 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
463 ms
2.16 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
579 ms
1.73 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
695 ms
1.44 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
811 ms
1.23 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
927 ms
1.08 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 042 ms
0.959 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 158 ms
0.863 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 274 ms
0.785 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 390 ms
0.719 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
1 506 ms
0.664 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
1 622 ms
0.617 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
1 737 ms
0.576 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
1 853 ms
0.540 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
2 780 ms
0.360 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
3 707 ms
0.270 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
5 560 ms
0.180 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
7 413 ms
0.135 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