BPM: Chapter Six

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
67.9 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
17
Length of 1 beat
0.8837 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.5346 sec
Beats per second
1.1317 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
221 ms
4.53 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
442 ms
2.26 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
663 ms
1.51 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
884 ms
1.13 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 105 ms
0.905 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 325 ms
0.754 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 546 ms
0.647 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 767 ms
0.566 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 988 ms
0.503 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 209 ms
0.453 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 430 ms
0.412 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 651 ms
0.377 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 872 ms
0.348 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
3 093 ms
0.323 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 314 ms
0.302 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 535 ms
0.283 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
5 302 ms
0.189 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
7 069 ms
0.141 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
10 604 ms
0.0943 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
14 138 ms
0.0707 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
75 BPM
Fast dub/reggae
90 BPM
Deep house
96 BPM
Slow house
120 BPM
Electro house
130 BPM
Trance
135 BPM
Dubstep
140 BPM
Hard house
145 BPM
Jungle
160 BPM
Drum&Bass
175 BPM
Gabber
190 BPM

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