BPM: Cave

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
87.5 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
21.9
Length of 1 beat
0.6857 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.7429 sec
Beats per second
1.4583 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
171 ms
5.83 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
343 ms
2.92 Hz

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

4/16
1/4
25%
686 ms
1.46 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
857 ms
1.17 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 029 ms
0.972 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 200 ms
0.833 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 371 ms
0.729 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 543 ms
0.648 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 714 ms
0.583 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 886 ms
0.530 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 057 ms
0.486 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 229 ms
0.449 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 400 ms
0.417 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 571 ms
0.389 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 743 ms
0.365 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 114 ms
0.243 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 486 ms
0.182 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 229 ms
0.122 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 971 ms
0.0911 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
75 BPM
Fast dub/reggae
90 BPM
Deep house
96 BPM
Slow house
120 BPM
Electro house
130 BPM
Trance
135 BPM
Dubstep
140 BPM
Hard house
145 BPM
Jungle
160 BPM
Drum&Bass
175 BPM
Gabber
190 BPM

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