What Is BPM?

BPM stands for beats per minute: how many beats of a steady pulse fit into one minute. It is the standard measure of a song’s tempo, and everything that has to line up with the music, from a metronome to a DJ’s mix to a video edit, uses it.

How BPM works

If a song is at 60 BPM, there is one beat every second. At 120 BPM there are two beats a second, so each beat lasts half a second. The time between beats in milliseconds is 60,000 divided by the BPM, so 120 BPM is 500 ms per beat and 90 BPM is about 667 ms. A beat is the pulse you would naturally tap your foot to, and in most popular music it corresponds to a quarter note in 4/4 time.

Tempo markings

Before metronomes, composers described tempo with Italian words. They map roughly to BPM like this:

  • Largo (very slow): about 40–60 BPM
  • Adagio (slow): about 66–76 BPM
  • Andante (walking pace): about 76–108 BPM
  • Moderato (moderate): about 108–120 BPM
  • Allegro (fast, lively): about 120–156 BPM
  • Presto (very fast): about 168–200 BPM

The boundaries differ between sources; treat them as ranges, not exact limits.

Typical BPM by genre

  • Ballads: about 60–80 BPM
  • Hip-hop: about 70–100 BPM (often felt as half of a faster double-time pulse)
  • Pop: about 100–130 BPM
  • House: about 120–130 BPM
  • Rock: about 110–150 BPM, with a wide spread
  • Drum and bass: about 170–180 BPM
  • Punk: often 160 BPM and up

These are habits, not rules, but they are useful for judging whether a measured BPM is plausible.

Half-time and double-time

A song at 140 BPM and the same song counted at 70 BPM have the same speed: the only difference is whether you call each beat or every second beat “the beat”. This is why tempo tools sometimes disagree. A slow hip-hop track might be 70 BPM or 140 BPM depending on which pulse you follow, and a drum and bass track at 174 BPM is often described at 87. The BPM finder in Mewzick reports a main tempo and, when a second reading is about as plausible, shows the alternative. The one that feels right is the one you naturally tap your foot to.

Beats in other time signatures

In 4/4 and 3/4 the beat is a quarter note. In compound meters such as 6/8 or 12/8, music is usually felt in groups of three eighth notes, so the beat is a dotted quarter note and the BPM counts those groups. The same notation, played at the same speed, can therefore be described by different BPM numbers, which is another reason to always find out what the beat is before you compare tempos.

How to find the BPM of a song

  1. Tap it. Press a key or button in time with the beat. The tap tempo tool averages your taps, and the more taps you give it (eight or more), the steadier the result.
  2. Count it. Count the beats for 15 seconds and multiply by four. It is rougher, but needs nothing but a clock.
  3. Analyze it. Drop an audio file or play music near the microphone in the BPM finder. It looks for repeated sudden rises in energy (onsets, such as drum hits) and finds the tempo at which they recur most consistently. It works best on music with a clear, steady beat and is less reliable on rubato playing or tempo changes.

What BPM is useful for

  • Practicing with a metronome at a speed you can play cleanly, then raising it gradually.
  • Matching tracks when DJing or mixing, which needs songs with compatible tempos.
  • Setting delay and reverb times that follow the beat in a recording.
  • Cutting video or choosing music for exercise at a target pace.

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