Music & audio
Bars, beats & duration
Convert bars to elapsed time or elapsed time into bars and beats.
A clear answer. Here’s how.
Quarter-note beats per bar = numerator × 4/denominator. At a constant quarter-note BPM, duration = bars × quarter-note beats per bar × 60/BPM. Reverse mode returns decimal bars and complete bars plus remaining notated beats. No tempo changes or pickup bars are inferred.
See a worked example
Worked example
A fixed demonstration, separate from the values you enter above.
- Starting from
- Number of bars
- Number of bars
- 16
- Quarter-note tempo (BPM)
- 120
- Time signature: beats per bar
- 4
- Time signature: beat note
- 4
Example result
- Duration (seconds)
- 32
- Duration (minutes)
- 0.533333333333
- Decimal bars
- 16
- Complete bars
- 16
- Notated beats into next bar
- 0