BPM: Cong Wei Jian Guo De Hai

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
77.1 BPM
Beats per bar
3 beats
Bars per minute
25.7
Length of 1 beat
0.7782 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.3346 sec
Beats per second
1.285 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
146 ms
6.85 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
292 ms
3.43 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
438 ms
2.28 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
584 ms
1.71 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
730 ms
1.37 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
875 ms
1.14 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 021 ms
0.979 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 167 ms
0.857 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 313 ms
0.761 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 459 ms
0.685 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 605 ms
0.623 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 751 ms
0.571 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
1 897 ms
0.527 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 043 ms
0.490 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 189 ms
0.457 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 335 ms
0.428 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
3 502 ms
0.286 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
4 669 ms
0.214 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
7 004 ms
0.143 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
9 339 ms
0.107 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