BPM: F G Fans

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
87.1 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
21.8
Length of 1 beat
0.6889 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.7555 sec
Beats per second
1.4517 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
172 ms
5.81 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
344 ms
2.90 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
517 ms
1.94 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
689 ms
1.45 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
861 ms
1.16 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 033 ms
0.968 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 206 ms
0.830 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 378 ms
0.726 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 550 ms
0.645 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 722 ms
0.581 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 894 ms
0.528 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 067 ms
0.484 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 239 ms
0.447 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 411 ms
0.415 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 583 ms
0.387 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 755 ms
0.363 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 133 ms
0.242 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 511 ms
0.181 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 266 ms
0.121 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
11 022 ms
0.0907 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