BPM: No Hard Feelings

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
84.9 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
21.2
Length of 1 beat
0.7067 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.8269 sec
Beats per second
1.415 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
177 ms
5.66 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
353 ms
2.83 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
530 ms
1.89 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
707 ms
1.41 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
883 ms
1.13 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 060 ms
0.943 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 237 ms
0.809 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 413 ms
0.707 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 590 ms
0.629 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 767 ms
0.566 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 943 ms
0.515 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 120 ms
0.472 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 297 ms
0.435 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 473 ms
0.404 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 650 ms
0.377 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 827 ms
0.354 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 240 ms
0.236 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 654 ms
0.177 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 481 ms
0.118 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
11 307 ms
0.0884 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