Convert beats per minute to note lengths
🎵 Why This Matters Setting delay and reverb times to match your track's tempo is what makes effects sit in the groove. Converting BPM to milliseconds gives you exact note-length timings for every delay, echo, and modulation in your session.
The classic "U2 delay" sound made famous by The Edge is built almost entirely from a dotted-eighth-note delay time — the same math this calculator runs, just applied to a guitar instead of a DAW plugin.
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How It's Calculated: One beat (a quarter note) lasts 60,000 milliseconds divided by your BPM. From there, every note value is a simple multiple: a half note is two beats, a whole note is four, an eighth note is half a beat, and so on. Dotted notes add half their own length again.
Why Producers Use It: Tempo-synced timings make delays, echoes, and reverb tails lock to the groove instead of fighting it. Set a delay to the eighth-note value for a rhythmic bounce, or the dotted-eighth for that classic "the edge" guitar feel. Sidechain releases, LFO rates, and gate times all benefit from matching the beat.
Dotted and Triplet Notes: A dotted note is 1.5× its base length (a dotted eighth = eighth + sixteenth). Triplets divide a beat into three instead of two. Both are staples for creating swing, syncopation, and width without changing the underlying tempo.
Using Your Results: Punch these millisecond values straight into your delay and reverb plugins when they don't offer host-sync, or use them to double-check that a synced plugin is behaving. For live performance, rounding to the nearest whole millisecond is more than accurate enough for the ear.
Example: Say your track runs at 120 BPM. One beat (quarter note) = 60,000 ÷ 120 = 500 ms. From there: whole note = 500 × 4 = 2000 ms, eighth note = 500 ÷ 2 = 250 ms, and dotted eighth = 250 × 1.5 = 375 ms — the classic delay time for that bouncy, tempo-locked echo.
A dotted note is 1.5× its base length — a dotted eighth note equals an eighth plus a sixteenth. It's commonly used for delay times that create rhythmic bounce, like the classic dotted-eighth delay sound.
If your DAW's tempo has automation or isn't perfectly locked to the BPM you entered, the plugin's host-synced timing will drift from a fixed millisecond value. Manually entering the millisecond value freezes the timing regardless of tempo changes.
Yes — rounding to the nearest whole millisecond is more than accurate enough for the ear. Sub-millisecond precision makes no audible difference in delay or reverb timing.