BPM: Ji Yi Guang Nian

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
95.6 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
23.9
Length of 1 beat
0.6276 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.5105 sec
Beats per second
1.5933 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
157 ms
6.37 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
314 ms
3.19 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
471 ms
2.12 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
628 ms
1.59 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
785 ms
1.27 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
941 ms
1.06 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 098 ms
0.910 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 255 ms
0.797 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 412 ms
0.708 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 569 ms
0.637 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 726 ms
0.579 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 883 ms
0.531 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 040 ms
0.490 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 197 ms
0.455 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 354 ms
0.425 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 510 ms
0.398 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
3 766 ms
0.266 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 021 ms
0.199 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
7 531 ms
0.133 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 042 ms
0.0996 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