BPM: Go

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
73.8 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
18.5
Length of 1 beat
0.813 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.252 sec
Beats per second
1.23 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
203 ms
4.92 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
407 ms
2.46 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
610 ms
1.64 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
813 ms
1.23 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 016 ms
0.984 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 220 ms
0.820 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 423 ms
0.703 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 626 ms
0.615 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 829 ms
0.547 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 033 ms
0.492 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 236 ms
0.447 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 439 ms
0.410 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 642 ms
0.378 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 846 ms
0.351 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 049 ms
0.328 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 252 ms
0.308 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 878 ms
0.205 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
6 504 ms
0.154 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
9 756 ms
0.102 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
13 008 ms
0.0769 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