BPM: I Swear To God

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
81.7 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
20.4
Length of 1 beat
0.7344 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.9376 sec
Beats per second
1.3617 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
5.45 Hz

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

3/16
3/16
18.75%
551 ms
1.82 Hz

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

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

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 102 ms
0.908 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 285 ms
0.778 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 469 ms
0.681 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 652 ms
0.605 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 836 ms
0.545 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 020 ms
0.495 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 203 ms
0.454 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 387 ms
0.419 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 570 ms
0.389 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 754 ms
0.363 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 938 ms
0.340 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 406 ms
0.227 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 875 ms
0.170 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 813 ms
0.113 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
11 750 ms
0.0851 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