BPM: Alright

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
96 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
24
Length of 1 beat
0.625 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.5 sec
Beats per second
1.6 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
156 ms
6.40 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
313 ms
3.20 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
469 ms
2.13 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
625 ms
1.60 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
781 ms
1.28 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
938 ms
1.07 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 094 ms
0.914 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 250 ms
0.800 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 406 ms
0.711 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 563 ms
0.640 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 719 ms
0.582 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 875 ms
0.533 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 031 ms
0.492 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 188 ms
0.457 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 344 ms
0.427 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 500 ms
0.400 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
3 750 ms
0.267 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
5 000 ms
0.200 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
7 500 ms
0.133 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
10 000 ms
0.100 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