90 BPM Metronome
← All tools90 BPM sits in the middle of andante, which is the widest band in the whole marking system, and it is the tempo an enormous amount of recorded music simply lives at — classic hip-hop production in particular, which mostly sits between the mid-80s and the mid-90s. It is also the speed at which sixteenth notes reach six a second, which is roughly where evenness stops being automatic for most players. The metronome below is set to 90.
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 90 BPM
- Press Start and count 1 2 3 4 aloud. At 90 a bar of 4/4 lasts 2.67 seconds, slow enough to count comfortably and fast enough that a phrase does not sag.
- For a groove, set eighths and turn the swing slider up to somewhere between 10 and 25 per cent. That is well short of a full shuffle, which is where a lot of programmed hip-hop actually sits - late, but nowhere near the triplet grid.
- For technique, use straight sixteenths with no swing and play a scale one note per click. Six notes a second is where unevenness becomes audible instead of merely present.
- In 6/8, set beats per bar to 2 and turn on triplets: each of the two clicks is a dotted quarter and the three eighths inside it are filled in.
Six notes a second, and what breaks there
At 90 BPM a sixteenth note lasts 167 milliseconds, and four of them fill each 667-millisecond beat. Six notes a second does not sound demanding written down, and it is not — almost anyone can produce six notes in a second. What is demanding is producing six evenly spaced notes in a second, repeatedly, with the fourth one not arriving fractionally early because it is the one where the hand changes position.
This is why 90 is a more useful technical tempo than it looks. Slower than this and an uneven run can be corrected consciously between notes; faster and you cannot hear the unevenness at all, only feel that the passage is uncomfortable. Around 90, with a sixteenth-note click running, the two are simultaneously true: the error is audible and there is just enough time to notice which note caused it. Play the run, listen for the note that arrives against the click rather than on it, and then practise the two-note pair around it rather than the whole run again.
The tempo a whole genre settled on
Sampled, drum-machine hip-hop of the boom-bap kind mostly lives between about 85 and 95 BPM, and 90 is squarely in the middle of it. There is a mechanical reason as well as a musical one: at that tempo, a bar of four is long enough for a two-bar drum loop to breathe and for a vocal line to fit a lot of syllables per bar without crowding, and the kick-snare pattern lands at a walking rate rather than a dancing one.
If you are programming or playing along at 90, the swing control matters more than the tempo does. A completely straight sixteenth grid at 90 sounds mechanical in a way that is instantly recognisable, and most of the records this tempo is associated with are not straight — the offbeat sixteenth sits late, somewhere short of a full triplet. Set the subdivision to sixteenths for the grid, or to eighths with swing up around 15 or 20 per cent to hear what a small displacement actually does to the feel — a fifth of the way to a shuffle is already plenty.
What 90 BPM works out to
Every number below follows from one division: sixty seconds over 90 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 | 90 | 667 ms |
| Eighth note | 180 | 333 ms |
| Eighth-note triplet | 270 | 222 ms |
| Sixteenth note | 360 | 167 ms |
| Bar of 4/4 | 22.5 | 2667 ms |
Two tempos on this site are one arithmetic step away: 180 BPM is twice 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 90 BPM falls in the Italian markings
90 BPM is covered by two words at once, Andante and Andantino. 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
- Is 90 BPM fast or slow?
- It is in the middle of andante, the band that covers 76 to 108, which puts it in the middle of the slow half of the marking system. In popular music terms it is mid-tempo: slower than almost anything you would dance to, faster than a ballad, and about the rate of a relaxed heartbeat under mild exertion.
- What time signature should I use at 90?
- Whatever the music is in — but if it is in 6/8 or 12/8, set beats per bar to 2 or 4 and turn on triplets rather than setting beats per bar to 6 or 12. The metronome will happily click six times a bar, but that gives you six equal beats, and 6/8 is two beats of three, not six of one. The triplet subdivision under a two-beat bar is what that actually sounds like.
- Can I swing sixteenths?
- Not on this metronome, and for a reason. Swing here means displacing the offbeat of a pair towards the triplet grid, and with sixteenths as the primary division there is no pair left inside the click to displace — the clicks already are the grid. If you want a swung sixteenth feel, set the subdivision to eighths and turn the swing up: the swung eighth offbeat is the reference the sixteenths are being pulled towards, and hearing it is more useful than hearing all four clicks smeared.
