BPM: Nar Vi Tva Blir En

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
89.2 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
22.3
Length of 1 beat
0.6726 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.6906 sec
Beats per second
1.4867 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
168 ms
5.95 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
336 ms
2.97 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
504 ms
1.98 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
673 ms
1.49 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
841 ms
1.19 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 009 ms
0.991 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 177 ms
0.850 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 345 ms
0.743 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 513 ms
0.661 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 682 ms
0.595 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 850 ms
0.541 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 018 ms
0.496 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 186 ms
0.457 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 354 ms
0.425 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 522 ms
0.396 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 691 ms
0.372 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 036 ms
0.248 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 381 ms
0.186 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 072 ms
0.124 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 762 ms
0.0929 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