BPM: Hopeulisten

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
74.7 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
18.7
Length of 1 beat
0.8032 sec
Length of 1 bar
3.2129 sec
Beats per second
1.245 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
201 ms
4.98 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
402 ms
2.49 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
602 ms
1.66 Hz

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

5/16
5/16
31.25%
1 004 ms
0.996 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 205 ms
0.830 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 406 ms
0.711 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 606 ms
0.623 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 807 ms
0.553 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
2 008 ms
0.498 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 209 ms
0.453 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 410 ms
0.415 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 610 ms
0.383 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 811 ms
0.356 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
3 012 ms
0.332 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
3 213 ms
0.311 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 819 ms
0.208 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
6 426 ms
0.156 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
9 639 ms
0.104 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
12 851 ms
0.0778 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