interpretation / Symbolic
Tempo
How fast a beat is, in beats-per-minute. Tempo is what turns tempo-free musical durations (beats) into wall-clock time: a beat lasts 60000 / bpm milliseconds. Off-axis: like a meter, a tempo is not a structural object but the interpretive context that maps the beats of a rhythm / metric-grid onto absolute milliseconds (it reuses the beats↔ms convention of duration-utils).
How it works
This object can carry concrete values or a musical interpretation, depending on its notation.
A key or tonal context supplies meaning that the underlying pitch structure does not carry by itself.
Written forms
Ways to write this concept
Each notation describes the same underlying object. Load a playable example to hear one MIDI realization in the Code Sequencer.
bpm
Tempo in beats per minute
12096