BPM: Te FallE

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
69 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
17.3
Length of 1 beat
0.8696 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.4783 sec
Beats per second
1.15 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
217 ms
4.60 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
435 ms
2.30 Hz

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

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

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 087 ms
0.920 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 304 ms
0.767 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 522 ms
0.657 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 739 ms
0.575 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 957 ms
0.511 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 174 ms
0.460 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 391 ms
0.418 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 609 ms
0.383 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 826 ms
0.354 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
3 043 ms
0.329 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 261 ms
0.307 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 478 ms
0.287 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
5 217 ms
0.192 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
6 957 ms
0.144 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
10 435 ms
0.0958 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
13 913 ms
0.0719 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