BPM: For All Sorrow

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
68.7 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
17.2
Length of 1 beat
0.8734 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.4934 sec
Beats per second
1.145 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
218 ms
4.58 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
437 ms
2.29 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
655 ms
1.53 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
873 ms
1.15 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 092 ms
0.916 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 310 ms
0.763 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 528 ms
0.654 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 747 ms
0.572 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 965 ms
0.509 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 183 ms
0.458 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 402 ms
0.416 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 620 ms
0.382 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 838 ms
0.352 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
3 057 ms
0.327 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 275 ms
0.305 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 493 ms
0.286 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
5 240 ms
0.191 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
6 987 ms
0.143 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
10 480 ms
0.0954 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
13 974 ms
0.0716 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