Free tap tempo and BPM to ms

How to tap tempo

Listen for the pulse, the beat you would nod your head to, and tap on it. A tap BPM tool works the same everywhere: it times your taps and turns them into beats per minute. Do not try to tap the fast hi-hat or the lyrics, tap the steady beat, usually the kick or the click. The first tap only starts the clock. From the second tap on, we measure the time between taps and turn it into BPM.

Four taps give a rough number, eight give a steady one, and sixteen are about as good as it gets. We average the intervals of your last twenty-four taps, so one late tap hardly moves the result. The spread next to the BPM shows how even your taps were. A small spread means a steady hand.

If you stop for two seconds, the next tap starts a new measurement. You never need to press reset between songs, but there is a button when you want it.

BPM to ms: the maths

A beat lasts 60,000 divided by the BPM, in milliseconds. At 120 BPM a quarter note is 500 ms, an eighth is 250 ms and a sixteenth is 125 ms. At 90 BPM the quarter is 666.7 ms. This is the whole BPM calculator for delay times, and the table does it for every note length so that you do not have to.

A dotted note is one and a half times the straight note, so a dotted eighth at 120 BPM is 375 ms. A triplet is two thirds of the straight note, so an eighth triplet at 120 BPM is 166.7 ms. The last column gives the same length as a rate in hertz, which is what an LFO, a tremolo or an auto-pan wants.

Delay times that stay in time

A delay that repeats on the grid disappears into the groove, and a delay set by feel often rubs against it. Set the delay time to a note length of the tempo and the repeats land on the beat. A quarter note delay gives a clear echo, a dotted eighth gives the bouncing feel that guitarists love, and a triplet gives a rolling one.

Many plugins have a sync switch that does this for you. When yours does not, or when the delay is a pedal, a tape echo or a hardware unit with a time knob in milliseconds, this table is the answer. Click a value to copy it and paste it into the plugin.

Reverb pre-delay, release times and LFO rates

Reverb pre-delay is the gap before the tail starts. A short value, such as a sixty-fourth or a thirty-second note, keeps the tail tight behind the dry sound, and a longer one, such as a sixteenth, opens a gap that lets the vocal breathe. Both stay in time when they come from the tempo.

A compressor release set to the length of a beat or a bar makes a bus pump with the music. A sidechain or a gate release can follow an eighth or a sixteenth. The Hz column turns a note length into a rate for tremolo, auto-pan or a filter LFO: one cycle per quarter note at 120 BPM is 2 Hz.

For drummers, band leaders and teachers

Tap along to a recording to learn the tempo of a song you have to cover, then set that BPM on the click for rehearsal. Drummers use it to write a count-in and to check that a click track matches the record. A band can agree on a number instead of arguing about slow or fast.

Teachers use it to give a student a target speed for an exercise, and to write down the tempo of a piece when the score has no metronome mark. If the tempo is not a whole number, the hundredths tell you how close the tapping got.

Tap tempo or a BPM finder from a file?

Tapping is instant and needs no file, so it is perfect for a song on the radio, a record on a turntable, or a tempo you hear in your head. A BPM finder is better when you have the audio, because it measures the whole song and does not get tired. We offer both and they share the same delay table.

If your tapping and the BPM finder disagree by a factor of two, nobody is wrong, one of you is counting half time. Use the half and double buttons to line them up.