how to calculate delay time and tempo

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mixaholic

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does anyone know how to calculate the delay time and the tempo of a song? It said to "start a stopwatch and count 25, then stop the stopwatch at the 25th beat and multiply the time by 41.81. The result is the delay time in milliseconds for a quarter note delay." I don't get how to do the beatcounting part and i don't get what the 1/2 note, 1/4, 1/8 note and so on means so can someone give me a brief desciption and example of this? I read that engineers normally set the delay time to the tempo of the song so it can be noticed less so this is what i'm trying to do. thanks
 
Most rock songs are going to be in 4/4 time, meaning your natural tendancy is to tap your foot on the quarter notes. count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4...as you tap your foot to the quarter notes. 4 quater notes is the same as 2 half notes, or one whole note. basic division.

Anyway, I would probably just count the quarter notes in 30 seconds (how many times you tap your foot), and double that count to get your beat per minute. Now you can set your delay to that exact bpm, or half of it or double it, or some other fraction or multiple of it depending on the type of delay sound you are going for.
 
what are the quarter notes? lol. i never knew what they were
 
mixaholic said:
does anyone know how to calculate the delay time and the tempo of a song?
Click to expand...
It's very simple. The formula is

60,000 / BPM = 1/4note delay in milliseconds (length of quarter note).

G.
 
If BMP=79.671 then would the delay time in 1/4 note equal 753.097?
 
should i use the scale that says "thirty seconds" or does it matter which one i use?
 
mixaholic said:
If BMP=79.671 then would the delay time in 1/4 note equal 753.097?
Click to expand...
That's correct, ~753 milliseconds, which is the same as saying 0.753 seconds, or just over 3/4 of a second.

If you think about it, it's really very straightforward. Assuming a quarter note equals one beat, 60 beats per minute means one beat per second. Therefore, at 60BPM, one quarter note is 1 second (or 1000 milliseconds [ms]) in length. 120BPM is twice as fast, therefore a quarter note is a half as long - or 500ms - at that tempo. In your example, 79 BPM is just a bit over 60, so the length of the quarter note is just a bit under one second.

The formula "60,000 / BPM = 1/4 note in ms" is a straightforward representation of that, and very easy to remember if you understand that. Because there are 1000 ms in one second and there are 60 seconds in a minute, there are 60,000 ms in one minute. So taking the number of milliseconds in a minute (60,000) and dividing that by the beats per minute (BPM), you have the length of one beat - or one quarter note - in milliseconds.

G.
 
Is there a standard tempo for certain types of music or is each song individual? I know that its the songwriter's decision, but im just wondering if there's standards people tend to stick to.
 
mx_mx said:
Is there a standard tempo for certain types of music or is each song individual? I know that its the songwriter's decision, but im just wondering if there's standards people tend to stick to.
Click to expand...

There is no real standard, but most rock hip hop songs are 4/4 time because its easy to dance to, waltz's are a little different with a 3/4 time, but Ive written rock/industrial songs in 17/8 @ 141 bpm which is damn near impossible to dance to because of an extra 8th note that fucks everything up, but it sounds pretty damn cool.
 
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