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Beats per minute
One more look at what you missed.
Tempo is counted in beats per minute.
Musicians write it BPM. A bigger number means more beats in each minute, so a faster tempo.
At 60 BPM, one beat lasts one second.
Count along with a clock: one beat for every second.
No sound? Check your volume, and that your phone is not on silent.
At 120 BPM, how many beats fall in one second?
Listen to 60, 90 and 120 BPM.
Each one is a little more crowded than the one before.
Double the number, and the beats come twice as fast.
Halve it, and each beat lasts twice as long. Most songs sit somewhere between 60 and 180 BPM.
Which tempo is this?
A metronome shows its tempo as a BPM number.
Set it to a number, and it plays exactly that many beats every minute.
Leave it at 60 and press Begin challenge. Tap once a second, eight times.
Front view of a mechanical metronome with its pendulum and tempo scale.
Loading the interactive metronome…
You can read a tempo in BPM.
What you learned
- Tempo is counted in beats per minute, written BPM.
- At 60 BPM a beat lasts one second; at 120, half a second.
- Double the number and the beats come twice as fast.
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