BPM: If I Could Be

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
173.6 BPM
Beats per bar
3 beats
Bars per minute
57.9
Length of 1 beat
0.3456 sec
Length of 1 bar
1.0369 sec
Beats per second
2.8933 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
64.8 ms
15.4 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
130 ms
7.72 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
194 ms
5.14 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
259 ms
3.86 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
324 ms
3.09 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
389 ms
2.57 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
454 ms
2.20 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
518 ms
1.93 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
583 ms
1.71 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
648 ms
1.54 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
713 ms
1.40 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
778 ms
1.29 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
842 ms
1.19 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
907 ms
1.10 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
972 ms
1.03 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
1 037 ms
0.964 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
1 555 ms
0.643 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
2 074 ms
0.482 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
3 111 ms
0.321 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
4 147 ms
0.241 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