BPM: Broken Hearted Ass Bitch

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
71.8 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
18
Length of 1 beat
0.8357 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.3426 sec
Beats per second
1.1967 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
209 ms
4.79 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
418 ms
2.39 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
627 ms
1.60 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
836 ms
1.20 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 045 ms
0.957 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 253 ms
0.798 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 462 ms
0.684 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 671 ms
0.598 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 880 ms
0.532 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 089 ms
0.479 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 298 ms
0.435 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 507 ms
0.399 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 716 ms
0.368 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 925 ms
0.342 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 134 ms
0.319 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 343 ms
0.299 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
5 014 ms
0.199 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
6 685 ms
0.150 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
10 028 ms
0.0997 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
13 370 ms
0.0748 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