Tap a tempo, get the numbers that follow. Tap the pad with the mouse, or with the spacebar once the pad has focus, and read the tempo to one decimal with a steadiness score beside it. That tempo then fills in the delay times, the bar lengths and the runtime of an arrangement you sketch out — all in the browser, with no account.
Free and anonymous. Nothing you tap leaves the page.
The tool
Most tempo tools answer one question and stop, which means retyping the same number into three more tabs. These four share a single tempo field, so a BPM you tap once is already in the delay table, the bar calculator and the arrangement planner.
Tap along with the music for four or five beats. Clicking the pad gives it focus, and from there the spacebar taps too — the page will not scroll while the pad is focused.
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BPM
Tap twice to get a reading.
0 taps · ±0.0 ms · 0% steady
Every note value at the tempo above, in milliseconds.
| Note | Straight | Dotted | Triplet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/1 whole | 2,000.0 | 3,000.0 | 1,333.3 |
| 1/2 half | 1,000.0 | 1,500.0 | 666.7 |
| 1/4 quarter | 500.0 | 750.0 | 333.3 |
| 1/8 eighth | 250.0 | 375.0 | 166.7 |
| 1/16 sixteenth | 125.0 | 187.5 | 83.3 |
| 1/32 thirty-second | 62.5 | 93.8 | 41.7 |
Feed the straight column to a delay for repeats on the beat, the dotted column for the offbeat bounce, and the triplet column for a shuffle.
How long a run of bars lasts, and how many bars fit a clip of a given length.
1:04 — 64.0 seconds
15.0 bars — 15 whole, with 0.0 s left over
Set the bars for each section and the runtime totals up as you go.
starts 0:00 · runs 0:08
starts 0:08 · runs 0:32
starts 0:40 · runs 0:16
starts 0:56 · runs 0:16
starts 1:12 · runs 0:32
starts 1:44 · runs 0:16
starts 2:00 · runs 0:16
starts 2:16 · runs 0:16
starts 2:32 · runs 0:16
starts 2:48 · runs 0:08
88 bars · 2:56
The arithmetic
None of this is hard, and knowing it means you can sanity-check a result rather than trust a box. A minute is 60,000 milliseconds and tempo is beats per minute, so everything below is one division and a multiplication.
Divide 60,000 by the tempo and you have one quarter-note beat in milliseconds. At 120 BPM that is 500 ms; at 174 it is 344.8. Every other note value is that number scaled — an eighth is half of it, a sixteenth a quarter of it.
60000 ÷ BPM = one beat in ms
A dot adds half the note's own length back on, so a dotted eighth is one and a half eighths. A triplet fits three notes where two would go, so it is two thirds. Those two multipliers are the entire difference between the three columns of any delay table.
dotted × 1.5 · triplet × 0.667
A bar is its beat count times the length of a beat. In 4/4 at 120 BPM that is four beats of 500 ms, so two seconds flat. Multiply by the number of bars and you have the length of a section without counting it out in real time.
beats per bar × beat ms = one bar
One convention is where most bar calculations go wrong: tempo counts quarter notes, including in compound time. A bar of 6/8 holds six eighth notes, which is three quarter-note beats — not six. Count it as six and every length you derive is twice what the music does.
Delay times
Dial one of these into a delay, a tremolo or an LFO and the repeats land on the grid instead of near it. The straight column follows the beat; the dotted eighth is the one that gives a delay its offbeat lift.
| Tempo (BPM) | 1/4 | 1/8 | 1/8 dotted | 1/16 | 1/4 triplet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80 | 750.0 | 375.0 | 562.5 | 187.5 | 500.0 |
| 90 | 666.7 | 333.3 | 500.0 | 166.7 | 444.4 |
| 100 | 600.0 | 300.0 | 450.0 | 150.0 | 400.0 |
| 110 | 545.5 | 272.7 | 409.1 | 136.4 | 363.6 |
| 120 | 500.0 | 250.0 | 375.0 | 125.0 | 333.3 |
| 128 | 468.8 | 234.4 | 351.6 | 117.2 | 312.5 |
| 140 | 428.6 | 214.3 | 321.4 | 107.1 | 285.7 |
| 160 | 375.0 | 187.5 | 281.3 | 93.8 | 250.0 |
| 174 | 344.8 | 172.4 | 258.6 | 86.2 | 229.9 |
Values are milliseconds, rounded to a tenth. For a tempo that is not listed, tap it in above: the table inside the tool covers all 6 note values from 1/1 down to 1/32, which is 18 figures at any tempo.
Song structure
A song structure template is really a bar count with names attached, and these three are the shapes most tracks settle into. The runtimes are what they come out to at the tempo shown, in 4/4.
at 120 BPM, 4/4
The default radio shape: two verse-and-chorus cycles, a bridge to break the repetition, then a last chorus. Long enough to develop, short enough to hold.
88 bars · 2:56
at 128 BPM, 4/4
Built in sixteens so a DJ can mix in and out on a phrase. The long intro and outro are there for the transition, not for the listener.
104 bars · 3:15
at 120 BPM, 4/4
Thirty bars, which is exactly one minute at 120 BPM in 4/4. Two choruses with a short second verse, sized for a vertical video rather than a playlist.
30 bars · 1:00
At 120 BPM in 4/4 a bar is exactly two seconds, so thirty bars is a minute on the nose and a sixteen-bar verse is thirty-two seconds. At 128 BPM a bar is 1.875 seconds, which is why club edits are counted in sixteens rather than in seconds.
Getting a reading you can trust
A tapped tempo is only as good as the tapping. Four habits get you from roughly right to close enough to type into a session.
Two taps produce a number, but it is one interval wide and any flinch is the whole reading. The average settles around the fifth tap and keeps improving to about eight, which is as far back as it looks.
Tap what you would count as one, two, three, four — not the hi-hat. Tapping eighths reads double the tempo and tapping half notes reads half, which is how a 140 BPM track ends up saved as 70.
The percentage beside the reading is how tightly your taps agree with each other. Below about half, the number is a guess rather than a measurement.
Turn the click on and play it over the track. If the two drift apart across eight bars the tempo is close but not exact — nudge the tempo field by a tenth until they stay locked.
After the tempo
This page is a calculator and it stays one: free, anonymous, nothing to sign up for. Behind it is the studio, where the arrangement you just counted out becomes something you can hear and cut.
The studio is a paid product with a free plan: a one-time grant of 50 starter credits, no card. The calculator on this page is free either way.
See the Music StudioQuestions
Two taps give a reading, five or more give one worth using. The tool averages the last eight intervals rather than everything since you started, so it keeps up if you drift. A stutter is folded back into the beat it interrupted and a skipped beat is discarded, not averaged in. Stop for two seconds and the next tap starts fresh.
Yes, and there is nothing to sign up for: every calculation runs in your browser, and no audio, taps or arrangement leave the page. The studio it belongs to is a paid product with a free plan of 50 one-time starter credits, but the tapper never asks for it.
Divide 60,000 by the tempo to get one quarter-note beat. At 120 BPM that is 500 ms, so an eighth is 250 and a sixteenth is 125. Going the other way, 375 ms is 160 BPM read as a quarter note, or 120 BPM read as a dotted eighth.
A dot makes a note half as long again, so a dotted eighth is longer than an eighth. A triplet squeezes three notes into the space of two, so it is shorter. On a delay the dotted eighth pushes against the beat and the triplet swings. At 120 BPM a straight eighth is 250 ms, dotted is 375 and triplet is 166.7.
Beats per bar times the length of a beat. In 4/4 at 120 BPM a bar is two seconds, so a minute holds thirty bars. Change the signature and only the beat count moves: 3/4 gives a 1.5-second bar. The calculator covers 7 signatures and counts a compound bar in quarter-note beats, the way a DAW does.
Add up the bars and multiply by the bar length. A verse-and-chorus arrangement of 88 bars runs 2:56 at 120 BPM in 4/4; the same 88 bars at 140 BPM runs 2:31. That is the reason to write an arrangement in bars — the shape holds and the runtime follows the tempo.
How a described track becomes a finished piece with a vocal.
What actually separates one from another.
What you can and cannot do with a generated track.
Write the words with the verses and choruses marked.
Print-ready sheets for planning the picture side.
What the studio costs once you want to hear it.
The calculator stays free. When the arrangement you just counted out needs to exist as audio, the studio is a free account away.