BPM: 12345

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
161 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
40.3
Length of 1 beat
0.3727 sec
Length of 1 bar
1.4907 sec
Beats per second
2.6833 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
93.2 ms
10.7 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
186 ms
5.37 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
280 ms
3.58 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
373 ms
2.68 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
466 ms
2.15 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
559 ms
1.79 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
652 ms
1.53 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
745 ms
1.34 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
839 ms
1.19 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
932 ms
1.07 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 025 ms
0.976 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 118 ms
0.894 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
1 211 ms
0.826 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
1 304 ms
0.767 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
1 398 ms
0.716 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
1 491 ms
0.671 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
2 236 ms
0.447 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
2 981 ms
0.335 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
4 472 ms
0.224 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
5 963 ms
0.168 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