BPM: Feather

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
180.6 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
45.2
Length of 1 beat
0.3322 sec
Length of 1 bar
1.3289 sec
Beats per second
3.01 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
83.1 ms
12.0 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
166 ms
6.02 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
249 ms
4.01 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
332 ms
3.01 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
415 ms
2.41 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
498 ms
2.01 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
581 ms
1.72 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
664 ms
1.51 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
748 ms
1.34 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
831 ms
1.20 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
914 ms
1.09 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
997 ms
1.00 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
1 080 ms
0.926 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
1 163 ms
0.860 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
1 246 ms
0.803 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
1 329 ms
0.752 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
1 993 ms
0.502 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
2 658 ms
0.376 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
3 987 ms
0.251 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
5 316 ms
0.188 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