Online metronome · Free · No sign-up
The pocket tempo. 90 BPM is quick enough to feel like a groove and slow enough to swing, which is why golden-age hip hop, reggaeton and shuffle blues all cluster around it.
Beats per minute
90
Press Space to start and stop · ↑ ↓ to nudge off 90 · or
The tempo
Around 90 BPM a beat lasts about two thirds of a second. It is a forgiving tempo to play at: fast enough that a straight backbeat drives, slow enough that a swung or shuffled sixteenth still has room to sit behind the beat. Reggaeton’s dembow pattern is usually written between 90 and 100.
Where you hear it
Wondering whether a particular track is 90 BPM? Tap along with it and compare, or let the MagicBPM app listen and tell you.
Practice note: Swing lives here. Set the metronome to 90, play straight eighths against it, then push every second one late until it locks with the groove you are copying.
Presets
Every one opens the metronome already running at that BPM.
Need something in between? The full metronome covers 40 to 220 BPM.
MagicBPM for iPhone and Android
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.
Good to know
A relaxed mid-tempo groove: two beats roughly every 1.3 seconds. A beat lands every 0.667 seconds, so one bar of 4/4 lasts 2.667 seconds and a three-minute song runs to about 67 bars. Press Play above to hear it.
90 BPM is moderate. It sits in the middle of Andante, a comfortable walking-to-jogging pace, and is half of 180 BPM.
Golden-age and East Coast hip hop; Reggaeton and dancehall, which sit around 90 to 100; Shuffle blues and slow funk. The list is a guide rather than a rule: tempo varies within every genre.
This page opens already set to 90 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.
