How long is a beat in seconds?

Question

I wanna make a Minecraft noteblock song, and don't know how long a beat is in seconds (4/4). I know that 10 redstone ticks are in one second. I can use repeaters as rests, but I need to set the delay of the repeaters, and I can't make rests if I don't know how long a beat is, so please help me.

Edit: By the way everytime you right-click a repeater, the delay increases by 1 redstone tick. The delay is set to 1 redstone tick (or 0.1 seconds) by default. If you right click it after the delay reaches four redstone ticks, it goes back to one redstone tick.

Possible duplicate of Why do you need meter in music? – Carl Witthoft Sep 30 '19 at 12:21 — Carl Witthoft, Sep 30 '19 at 12:21

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 30 '19 at 05:05

At 120 BPM (beats per minute), which is a typical pop song tempo, every beat lasts half a second. Divide 60 by the BPM to get the length of a beat at other tempos. You can use the Google metronome to try out tempos expressed in BPM.

if I understand your explanation correctly, you can set the timing of the notes and rests in tenths of a second. This is the tempo of the music in BPM for different lengths of beats (quarter notes):

Seconds  BPM

  0.3    200
  0.4    150
  0.5    120
  0.6    100
  0.7     85.71
  0.8     75
  0.9     66.66
  1.0     60

If you want to sub-divide the beats into shorter notes and rests, you will have to choose a tempo at which you can evenly divide the quarter notes; e.g. if you choose beats of 0.6 seconds at 100BPM, you can use eighth notes of 0.3 seconds and eighth note triplets of 0.2 seconds.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 30 '19 at 05:59

The length of a beat depends on tempo, and tempo depends on the style and feeling that's wanted. Or the other way around - whatever beat length you set, it sets a tempo and a feeling. If your beat is one second long, then you get 60 of them per minute, and the tempo is 60 beats per minute.

Try different tempos and see what you like.

How long is a beat in seconds?

2 Answers2