BPM: Alchemy

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
89.9 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
22.5
Length of 1 beat
0.6674 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.6696 sec
Beats per second
1.4983 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
167 ms
5.99 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
334 ms
3.00 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
501 ms
2.00 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
667 ms
1.50 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
834 ms
1.20 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
1 001 ms
0.999 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 168 ms
0.856 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 335 ms
0.749 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 502 ms
0.666 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 669 ms
0.599 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 835 ms
0.545 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
2 002 ms
0.499 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 169 ms
0.461 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 336 ms
0.428 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 503 ms
0.400 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 670 ms
0.375 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
4 004 ms
0.250 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 339 ms
0.187 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
8 009 ms
0.125 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 679 ms
0.0936 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