120 BPM Metronome
← All tools120 BPM is the tempo everything defaults to, and for once the default is defensible. It is exactly two beats a second, so a bar of 4/4 is two seconds and the arithmetic of every subdivision stays whole. It is the boundary where moderato ends and allegro begins. It is the marching cadence of most of the world's armies, and the floor of four-to-the-floor dance music. The metronome below is set to 120, which is also where it starts.
Subdivision and swing
Subdivision clicks are quieter and higher than the beat, so the pulse stays the loudest thing in the bar. Swing applies to eighths and triplets only, and pushes the offbeat of each pair later — 33% lands it on the triplet grid, 50% on a dotted eighth. The downbeat never moves.
Tempo trainer
Trainer off — the tempo stays exactly where you put it.
How to practise at 120 BPM
- Press Start. Two beats a second, 500 milliseconds each, a two-second bar of 4/4.
- Set beats per bar to 2 to hear it as a march: the accent lands on every other beat and the pendulum swings once per pair.
- For dance and pop, leave it in 4 with eighths on. 240 eighths a minute is the hi-hat rate of most four-to-the-floor music and is the layer that actually carries the groove.
- Use 120 as the ceiling of a ramp rather than a starting point: 80, step 4, every 8 bars, stop at 120 is ten steps and a complete practice session.
Why 120 is the default in every piece of software
Two beats a second is the reason. At 120 BPM a beat is exactly 500 milliseconds, a bar of 4/4 is exactly two seconds, an eighth is 250 milliseconds and a sixteenth is 125 — every subdivision down to the sixteenth lands on a whole number of milliseconds. For a sequencer laying out a grid, or a person trying to convert bars to minutes in their head, that is worth a lot, and it is why 120 became the number every DAW opens on and every metronome ships set to.
The musical case is just as strong. 120 is fast enough to feel like motion and slow enough to be countable, which puts it at the centre of an enormous amount of repertoire. It is the boundary between moderato, which closes at 120, and allegro, which opens there — the single number where the slow half of the marking system hands over to the fast half. A piece marked Allegro and played at 120 is at the bottom of its instruction; a piece marked Moderato and played at 120 is at the top of its. Both are legitimate readings of the same tick.
The marching tempo, and the dancing one
120 steps a minute is quick time in the United States armed forces and close to the standard in most others, which are generally set between about 112 and 120. That is not a coincidence of taste: it is roughly the cadence at which an adult of average height covers ground efficiently for a long time, which is what a marching pace is for. If you want to feel 120 without a metronome, walk briskly and count your left foot as the downbeat — you will be within a few BPM.
The same number turns up at the bottom of four-to-the-floor dance music. Disco settled around 110 to 125, house generally sits between 120 and 130, and the convention of a kick on every beat means the tempo is unusually literal — the BPM is the kick rate, with nothing to interpret. Set beats per bar to 4, accent on, eighths on, and what you are hearing is the skeleton of that entire idiom.
What 120 BPM works out to
Every number below follows from one division: sixty seconds over 120 beats. It is worth knowing the sixteenth-note figure before you decide a passage is playable — that is the rate your hands actually have to move at, not the tempo on the page.
| Note value | Per minute | One lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Quarter note — the beat | 120 | 500 ms |
| Eighth note | 240 | 250 ms |
| Eighth-note triplet | 360 | 167 ms |
| Sixteenth note | 480 | 125 ms |
| Bar of 4/4 | 30 | 2000 ms |
Two tempos on this site are one arithmetic step away: 60 BPM is half of this. Practising a passage at the slower one and hearing it at the faster one is the same notes at the same subdivision, counted differently.
Where 120 BPM falls in the Italian markings
120 BPM is covered by 3 words at once: Moderato, Allegretto and Allegro. Overlap is normal and is not a defect of the system: these words were in use for a century and a half before Maelzel's metronome existed, and they describe a character — how the music carries itself — with speed as a consequence. The bands below are the ones the standard reference tables give.
FAQ
- Why is 120 BPM the standard default tempo?
- Because it divides cleanly and sits in the middle of usable music. Two beats a second makes every subdivision a whole number of milliseconds, which matters to sequencer grids and to anyone doing tempo arithmetic in their head, and 120 is simultaneously the top of moderato and the bottom of allegro, so it is the least committal tempo a piece of software can pick on your behalf.
- Is 120 BPM fast?
- It is the exact point at which the markings start calling music fast: allegro's band opens at 120 and runs to 156. In practice 120 reads as brisk rather than fast — it is a marching pace, a dance-floor pace, and roughly the tempo of a great deal of pop music. Anything that sounds genuinely quick is usually above 140.
- Is 120 in 4/4 the same as 60 in cut time?
- The same clicks, a different count. At 120 in 4/4 you count four beats a bar and the metronome accents every fourth. Set beats per bar to 2 and you have a half-note pulse at 60 with the quarter notes as its subdivision — identical timing, but the accent now falls half as often, and phrases you were hearing in fours you will start hearing in twos. Which is right depends on where the music's weight actually lands.
- How many bars of 4/4 fit in a minute at 120?
- Thirty, exactly. Each bar is two seconds. That makes 120 the easiest tempo there is for working out how long a section will run: a 32-bar chorus is 64 seconds, and a three-minute song is 90 bars.
