Music Duration Calculator

The music duration calculator is here to help you keep time! Need to keep to a time limit in your vocal recital? Or looking to play John Cage's 4'33" at the optimal tempo? The music duration calculator can help with all these and more!

In this text, we'll discuss the formula for and definition of the duration of a musical piece. We'll also look deeper at what tempo in music is, and we'll examine some common tempo markings in musical pieces with the help of a music tempo chart.

Using the music duration calculator is as easy as reading the first line of your sheet music. If you don't understand the terms used, you can use the reference image at the top of the music duration calculator.

1. Select the piece's time signature from the list. The time signature determines how many beats a measure contains. The music duration calculator supports many different time signatures — if your time signature of choice isn't in our list, you can select "Other".

2. Enter the piece's tempo. The tempo is the speed at which the piece is played. It's measured in beats per minute or abbreviated as BPM.

3. Enter how many measures the piece has. Solid barlines separate measures, but it's typical for the sheet music to add numbers to measures, so you don't have to count them.

4. If, instead, you know how long your piece should go on for, the music duration calculator can work backward and determine at which tempo you should play.

5. Using software that limits you by the total time across all staves? Click on the Staves duration section at the bottom of the calculator to enable the Number of staves and Staves-time fields. Number of staves will let you enter how many staves your piece has. It then multiplies the Duration with it to determine the total time across all staves.

If you don't quite understand what duration in music means, read on!

In music, duration means how long a composition takes to perform. In some contexts, it also refers to how long a particular note lasts. We have separate calculators for note duration (the BPM calculator) and delay and reverb lengths, so this article will discuss the concept of an entire piece's length.

Although we've learned the definition of duration for musical pieces, it can still be hard to accurately pinpoint some pieces' durations. Large compositions with multiple movements like Beethoven's Fifth, or compositions with highly flexible tempos like Debussy's Arabesque No. 1, can have a highly variable duration. It's much easier to estimate durations for smaller pieces, especially those with a strict rhythm like Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 16.

Here's a simple formula that governs a musical piece's duration:

where $\text{duration}$ is in minutes and $\text{tempo}$ is in beats per minute, or BPM. Scroll down for more information on musical tempo. If the piece doesn't maintain a steady tempo throughout, the above formula won't hold.

And there you have it — a succinct definition of musical duration! Now, let's move on to what tempo in music means.

Tempo is the speed at which we perform a musical piece. The defining element of a musical piece's rhythm (also called its meter) is the beat. Most modern songs have four beats per measure, but many musical pieces throughout history have three, two, or even five or seven beats per measure. Tempo refers to the rate at which we play the beats of a composition, and that is why we note it in beats per minute (BPM). Faster tempo means more beats per minute. We can instinctively hear when a song speeds up, as tempo is a fundamental concept of music.

Composers need a way to convey the desired tempo at which musicians must perform their pieces. This is typically done by indicating the note value, which constitutes one beat and equating it with a beats-per-minute value, like $♩\!\!\!= 120$.

Above, we're dictating that a quarter note $♩\!\!\!$ must be played at a rate of $120$ beats per minute. Tempo is indicated at the top of an instrument's staff (the line of measures).

Sometimes, in older compositions, the tempo isn't given as a precise rate of beats per minute but is instead presented as some strange word in a foreign language (usually Italian). These are called tempo markings, and they're more guidelines than they are rules. Instead of indicating a precise tempo, tempo markings prescribe an entire range of tempos at which the musician can play the piece.

In this handy music tempo chart, we've tabulated some of the most common tempo markings in music in ascending order of tempo.