BPM: Coming To You

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
139.4 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
34.9
Length of 1 beat
0.4304 sec
Length of 1 bar
1.7217 sec
Beats per second
2.3233 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
108 ms
9.29 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
215 ms
4.65 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
323 ms
3.10 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
430 ms
2.32 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
538 ms
1.86 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
646 ms
1.55 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
753 ms
1.33 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
861 ms
1.16 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
968 ms
1.03 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 076 ms
0.929 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 184 ms
0.845 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 291 ms
0.774 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
1 399 ms
0.715 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
1 506 ms
0.664 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
1 614 ms
0.620 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
1 722 ms
0.581 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
2 582 ms
0.387 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
3 443 ms
0.290 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
5 165 ms
0.194 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
6 887 ms
0.145 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