BPM: For The Good Times

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
87.7 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
21.9
Length of 1 beat
0.6842 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.7366 sec
Beats per second
1.4617 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
5.85 Hz

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

3/16
3/16
18.75%
513 ms
1.95 Hz

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

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

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 026 ms
0.974 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 197 ms
0.835 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 368 ms
0.731 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 539 ms
0.650 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 710 ms
0.585 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 881 ms
0.532 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 052 ms
0.487 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 223 ms
0.450 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 395 ms
0.418 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 566 ms
0.390 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 737 ms
0.365 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 105 ms
0.244 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 473 ms
0.183 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 210 ms
0.122 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 946 ms
0.0914 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