BPM: I Wanna Dance

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
62.5 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
15.6
Length of 1 beat
0.96 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.84 sec
Beats per second
1.0417 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
240 ms
4.17 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
480 ms
2.08 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
720 ms
1.39 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
960 ms
1.04 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 200 ms
0.833 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 440 ms
0.694 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 680 ms
0.595 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 920 ms
0.521 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
2 160 ms
0.463 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 400 ms
0.417 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 640 ms
0.379 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 880 ms
0.347 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
3 120 ms
0.321 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
3 360 ms
0.298 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 600 ms
0.278 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 840 ms
0.260 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
5 760 ms
0.174 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
7 680 ms
0.130 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
11 520 ms
0.0868 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
15 360 ms
0.0651 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