BPM: Kif Kif

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
68.4 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
17.1
Length of 1 beat
0.8772 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.5088 sec
Beats per second
1.14 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
219 ms
4.56 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
439 ms
2.28 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
658 ms
1.52 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
877 ms
1.14 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 096 ms
0.912 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 316 ms
0.760 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 535 ms
0.651 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 754 ms
0.570 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 974 ms
0.507 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 193 ms
0.456 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 412 ms
0.415 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 632 ms
0.380 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 851 ms
0.351 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
3 070 ms
0.326 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 289 ms
0.304 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 509 ms
0.285 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
5 263 ms
0.190 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
7 018 ms
0.142 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
10 526 ms
0.0950 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
14 035 ms
0.0713 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