BPM, Delay & Reverb Calculator

Click the TAP button, or press the space bar, in time with the music. After a few taps the BPM settles. Stop for two seconds and the next tap starts a new count.

Divide 60,000 by the BPM to get one beat (a quarter note) in milliseconds. At 120 BPM that's 500 ms. An eighth note is half of that (250 ms), a dotted note is 1.5 times longer, and a triplet is two thirds as long. The table above does it for every note value.

Straight delays land right on the grid. Dotted delays (like a dotted eighth) land between the beats and give that bouncy, rolling feel. Triplet delays fit three echoes where two would normally go, which feels swung.

Switch to Hz to get rates for LFOs, tremolo, auto-pan and chorus that move in time with your song. For example, at 120 BPM a quarter note is 2 Hz.

A reverb that dies away just before the next beat or bar keeps the mix clear. The reverb table gives a pre-delay and a decay for each size, and pre-delay plus decay adds up to a note value at your tempo.

Pre-delay is a short gap before the reverb starts. It lets the dry sound, like the start of a vocal word, come through clearly before the space fills in behind it.