BPM: Amore Cieco

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
81.5 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
20.4
Length of 1 beat
0.7362 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.9448 sec
Beats per second
1.3583 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
184 ms
5.43 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
368 ms
2.72 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
552 ms
1.81 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
736 ms
1.36 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
920 ms
1.09 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 104 ms
0.906 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 288 ms
0.776 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 472 ms
0.679 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 656 ms
0.604 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 840 ms
0.543 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 025 ms
0.494 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 209 ms
0.453 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 393 ms
0.418 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 577 ms
0.388 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 761 ms
0.362 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 945 ms
0.340 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 417 ms
0.226 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 890 ms
0.170 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 834 ms
0.113 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
11 779 ms
0.0849 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