BPM: All The Stars

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
96.8 BPM
Beats per bar
4 beats
Bars per minute
24.2
Length of 1 beat
0.6198 sec
Length of 1 bar
2.4793 sec
Beats per second
1.6133 Hz

Fractions for base 16

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


1/16
1/16
6.25%
155 ms
6.45 Hz

2/16
1/8
12.5%
310 ms
3.23 Hz

3/16
3/16
18.75%
465 ms
2.15 Hz

4/16
1/4
25%
620 ms
1.61 Hz

5/16
5/16
31.25%
775 ms
1.29 Hz

6/16
3/8
37.5%
930 ms
1.08 Hz

7/16
7/16
43.75%
1 085 ms
0.922 Hz

8/16
1/2
50%
1 240 ms
0.807 Hz

9/16
9/16
56.25%
1 395 ms
0.717 Hz

10/16
5/8
62.5%
1 550 ms
0.645 Hz

11/16
11/16
68.75%
1 705 ms
0.587 Hz

12/16
3/4
75%
1 860 ms
0.538 Hz

13/16
13/16
81.25%
2 014 ms
0.496 Hz

14/16
7/8
87.5%
2 169 ms
0.461 Hz

15/16
15/16
93.75%
2 324 ms
0.430 Hz

16/16
1/1
100%
2 479 ms
0.403 Hz

24/16
3/2
150%
3 719 ms
0.269 Hz

32/16
2/1
200%
4 959 ms
0.202 Hz

48/16
3/1
300%
7 438 ms
0.134 Hz

64/16
4/1
400%
9 917 ms
0.101 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