BPM: Omega

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
91.4 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
22.9
Length of 1 beat
0.6565 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.6258 sec
Beats per second
1.5233 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
164 ms
6.09 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
328 ms
3.05 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
492 ms
2.03 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
656 ms
1.52 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
821 ms
1.22 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
985 ms
1.02 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 149 ms
0.870 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 313 ms
0.762 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 477 ms
0.677 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 641 ms
0.609 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 805 ms
0.554 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 969 ms
0.508 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 133 ms
0.469 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 298 ms
0.435 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 462 ms
0.406 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 626 ms
0.381 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
3 939 ms
0.254 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 252 ms
0.190 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
7 877 ms
0.127 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 503 ms
0.0952 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