BPM: Butterflies

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
73 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
18.3
Length of 1 beat
0.8219 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.2877 sec
Beats per second
1.2167 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
205 ms
4.87 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
411 ms
2.43 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
616 ms
1.62 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
822 ms
1.22 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 027 ms
0.973 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 233 ms
0.811 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 438 ms
0.695 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 644 ms
0.608 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 849 ms
0.541 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 055 ms
0.487 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 260 ms
0.442 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 466 ms
0.406 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 671 ms
0.374 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 877 ms
0.348 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 082 ms
0.324 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 288 ms
0.304 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 932 ms
0.203 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
6 575 ms
0.152 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
9 863 ms
0.101 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
13 151 ms
0.0760 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