BPM: Someday

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
63.9 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
16
Length of 1 beat
0.939 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.7559 sec
Beats per second
1.065 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
235 ms
4.26 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
469 ms
2.13 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
704 ms
1.42 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
939 ms
1.07 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 174 ms
0.852 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 408 ms
0.710 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 643 ms
0.609 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 878 ms
0.532 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
2 113 ms
0.473 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 347 ms
0.426 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 582 ms
0.387 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 817 ms
0.355 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
3 052 ms
0.328 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
3 286 ms
0.304 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 521 ms
0.284 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 756 ms
0.266 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
5 634 ms
0.178 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
7 512 ms
0.133 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
11 268 ms
0.0888 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
15 023 ms
0.0666 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