BPM: I Am

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
86.2 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
21.6
Length of 1 beat
0.6961 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.7842 sec
Beats per second
1.4367 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
174 ms
5.75 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
348 ms
2.87 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
522 ms
1.92 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
696 ms
1.44 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
870 ms
1.15 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 044 ms
0.958 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 218 ms
0.821 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 392 ms
0.718 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 566 ms
0.639 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 740 ms
0.575 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 914 ms
0.522 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 088 ms
0.479 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 262 ms
0.442 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 436 ms
0.410 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 610 ms
0.383 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 784 ms
0.359 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 176 ms
0.239 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 568 ms
0.180 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 353 ms
0.120 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
11 137 ms
0.0898 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