BPM: Can T Be Us

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
74.2 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
18.6
Length of 1 beat
0.8086 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.2345 sec
Beats per second
1.2367 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
202 ms
4.95 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
404 ms
2.47 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
606 ms
1.65 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
809 ms
1.24 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 011 ms
0.989 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 213 ms
0.824 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 415 ms
0.707 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 617 ms
0.618 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 819 ms
0.550 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 022 ms
0.495 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 224 ms
0.450 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 426 ms
0.412 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 628 ms
0.381 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 830 ms
0.353 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 032 ms
0.330 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 235 ms
0.309 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 852 ms
0.206 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
6 469 ms
0.155 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
9 704 ms
0.103 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
12 938 ms
0.0773 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