HesapHanem

Tempo to Hz Calculator

Enter a tempo and pick a note division.

How it is calculated

A tempo in beats per minute (a beat is a quarter note) becomes a frequency by dividing by 60: beat Hz = BPM ÷ 60. The note division then multiplies it: quarter ×1, eighth ×2, sixteenth ×4, half ×0.5, whole ×0.25, so note Hz = beat Hz × factor. The period is the time of one cycle, period (ms) = 1000 ÷ note Hz. The tool shows the note frequency, its period in milliseconds and the plain beat frequency, each with three decimals. The tempo must be above zero. Dotted notes and triplets are not offered, and an unrecognised division is treated as a quarter note.

Worked example

A track runs at 128 BPM and you want a delay or LFO locked to eighth notes. Beat frequency is 128 ÷ 60 = 2.133 Hz. An eighth note is twice as fast, so the frequency is 2.133 × 2 = 4.267 Hz. The period is 1000 ÷ 4.267 = 234.375 ms. A quarter-note delay at the same tempo would be 468.750 ms, exactly double, and a half note 937.500 ms.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Reading the Hz result as an audible pitch: 4.267 Hz is a rate of repetition (a delay or LFO speed), far below the range we hear as a tone.
  • Choosing the wrong division and then comparing it to a plugin set to another one: an eighth is half the length of a quarter, so setting the wrong one makes the sync drift.
  • Entering a tempo counted in half notes or eighths instead of quarter-note BPM: the tool takes BPM as quarter-note beats, and 128 in a different meter would be wrong.
  • Expecting dotted or triplet values: these are not included, so multiply the period by 1.5 for a dotted note or by two-thirds for a triplet yourself.

About this calculator

In music production, a tempo in beats per minute (BPM) can be converted directly into a frequency in Hertz by dividing 60 by the note duration in seconds — the same arithmetic used to set delay times, LFO rates, and filter modulation so they lock rhythmically to a song's tempo. Choosing a note division (whole, half, quarter, eighth, or sixteenth note) scales that base period, since a delay synced to an eighth note repeats at a different rate than one synced to a quarter note. Dotted and triplet values are not offered as divisions: for a dotted note, multiply the straight note's frequency by 2/3 (its period is 1.5 times longer), and for a triplet, multiply it by 3/2.

This calculator is a staple for electronic music producers, sound designers, and mixing engineers working in DAWs like Ableton Live, Logic Pro, or FLIP Studio, where synced delays, tremolo, and sidechain compression all depend on getting the millisecond period right. It's also used by audio plugin developers who need to translate a host's tempo into the Hz values their oscillators and filters actually take as input.

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Comments (1)

  • Editorial team

    The tool has no dotted or triplet option, but you can get them from the quarter-note period: multiply it by 0.75 for a dotted eighth, or by one third for an eighth-note triplet. At 120 BPM the quarter-note period is 500 ms, so a dotted eighth is 375 ms. Use the period for delay times and the frequency for LFO rates. Which of those do you set most often?

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