BPM: Denise S Last Son

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
82.4 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
20.6
Length of 1 beat
0.7282 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.9126 sec
Beats per second
1.3733 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
182 ms
5.49 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
364 ms
2.75 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
546 ms
1.83 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
728 ms
1.37 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
910 ms
1.10 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 092 ms
0.916 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 274 ms
0.785 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 456 ms
0.687 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 638 ms
0.610 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 820 ms
0.549 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
2 002 ms
0.499 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 184 ms
0.458 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 367 ms
0.423 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 549 ms
0.392 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 731 ms
0.366 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 913 ms
0.343 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 369 ms
0.229 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 825 ms
0.172 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 738 ms
0.114 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
11 650 ms
0.0858 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