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Summary: Serious musicians usually calculate beats per minute (BPM) with the assistance of a metronome. Use a metronome to practice tempo and calculate BPM with lessons from a professional musician in this free video on musical instruments.
Athena Reich is a professional musician, actress, artist, singer, songwriter and coach for all of the above. She is based in New York City. Reich has released four CDs, toured...read more
"Hi, my name is Athena Reich, and I'm a singer, songwriter, and music coach, here in New York City. In this clip, I'm going to talk about how to calculate beats per minute. Well, if you're a very serious musician, you're probably going at some point, get yourself a metronome. There are all kinds of metronomes. This is the cheapest one on the market, that I could find, only about fifteen bucks. Now, if you set this metronome, you can set it to different numbers. Here it says a hundred BPM, so hear that little tick, tick, tick, tick. That means that there's a hundred of those ticks per minute, a hundred beats per minute, but I can change it. I can move the numbers down, and now there's seventy two beats per minute, so it's slower, because there's less beats per minute, because a minute stays the same length and time, but if there's less. Now, what happens if it goes faster? We can go up to however high we want. A hundred and thirty is going to be a lot faster, so you use this to make sure your tempo is constant, when you are practicing your music. This is Athena Reich, in New York City."
eHow Article: How to Calculate Beats Per Minute