BPM: Must Ve Been The Wind

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
63 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
15.8
Length of 1 beat
0.9524 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.8095 sec
Beats per second
1.05 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
238 ms
4.20 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
476 ms
2.10 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
714 ms
1.40 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
952 ms
1.05 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 190 ms
0.840 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 429 ms
0.700 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 667 ms
0.600 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 905 ms
0.525 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
2 143 ms
0.467 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 381 ms
0.420 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 619 ms
0.382 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 857 ms
0.350 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
3 095 ms
0.323 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
3 333 ms
0.300 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 571 ms
0.280 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 810 ms
0.263 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
5 714 ms
0.175 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
7 619 ms
0.131 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
11 429 ms
0.0875 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
15 238 ms
0.0656 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