BPM: Hey Jane

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
94.6 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
23.7
Length of 1 beat
0.6342 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.537 sec
Beats per second
1.5767 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
159 ms
6.31 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
317 ms
3.15 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
476 ms
2.10 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
634 ms
1.58 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
793 ms
1.26 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
951 ms
1.05 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 110 ms
0.901 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 268 ms
0.788 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 427 ms
0.701 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 586 ms
0.631 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 744 ms
0.573 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 903 ms
0.526 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 061 ms
0.485 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 220 ms
0.450 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 378 ms
0.420 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 537 ms
0.394 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
3 805 ms
0.263 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 074 ms
0.197 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
7 611 ms
0.131 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 148 ms
0.0985 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