Beats per minute

60

Press Space to start and stop · ↑ ↓ to nudge off 60 · or

The tempo

What 60 BPM feels like.

At 60 BPM, each beat lasts about 1.000 seconds and a bar of four beats lasts about 4.000 seconds. The click marks the beat; you can play more than one note between clicks. Tempo markings and genre examples are guides, so choose a pace that suits your music.

Marking
Largo
40 to 60 BPM
One beat
1.000 sec
One 4/4 bar
4.000 sec
Bars in 3 min
45

Where you hear it

Music that sits at 60 BPM.

Double it and you land on 120 BPM, which is how a lot of this material is actually written. Same pulse, twice the counting.

Wondering whether a particular track is 60 BPM? Tap along with it and compare, or let the MagicBPM app listen and tell you.

Practice note: Play a short passage at 60, then raise the tempo a few BPM at a time while keeping the notes even.

Presets

Other common tempos

Every one opens the metronome set and ready to play at that BPM.

Need something in between? The full metronome covers 40 to 300 BPM.

MagicBPM for Mac, iPhone, Android and Apple Watch

Take 60 BPM with you.

The app pairs the same metronome with a real-time BPM detector that hears the music around you, so you can lift a tempo off a track and practice to it straight away.

  • Subdivisions: practice against eighths, triplets or sixteenths, with the in-between clicks tucked under the beat
  • Compound time that counts properly: 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 group in threes, and 7/8 lets you pick 2+2+3 or 3+2+2
  • Pick your click: acoustic out of the box, with woodblock, claves, cowbell and more sound packs in Pro
  • Haptics on every beat, with a firmer pulse on the downbeat
  • Keeps clicking even when your phone is silenced
Get MagicBPM, free

Good to know

60 BPM questions

What does 60 BPM sound like?

Slow, one beat per second. A beat lands every 1.000 seconds, so one bar of 4/4 lasts 4.000 seconds and a three-minute song runs to about 45 bars. Press Play above to hear it.

Is 60 BPM fast or slow?

60 BPM is a slow pulse. How it feels also depends on the rhythm, subdivisions, and whether you count every beat or every other beat.

What kind of music is 60 BPM?

Slow practice; ballads; ambient music. The list is a guide rather than a rule: tempo varies within every genre.

Is 60 BPM the same as 120 BPM?

Counted at double speed, 60 BPM is 120 BPM, which is how the same pulse is often written. Both counts can describe the same passage, depending on which pulse you follow.

How do I set a metronome to 60 BPM?

This page opens already set to 60 BPM, so press Play or hit the spacebar. To move off it, drag the slider, type a number into the BPM box, or use the arrow keys to nudge a beat at a time.

Measuring instead of setting? Use the tap tempo tool to find a song’s BPM.