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How to Calculate Notes Per Second

"Notes per second" is a formula that musicians (generally guitarists) use to determine how quickly they are playing a certain amount of music, often serving as a gauge to amateur musicians to show them how far they are progressing in their skill. While some musicians use the "beats per minute" system of measurement, since a musician plays at various speeds throughout a song, it must be converted to "notes per second" to get a better representation of how quickly a person is playing.

Things You'll Need

  • Instrument
  • Metronome
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Instructions

    • 1

      Turn on your metronome and play your instrument. When you are done playing the piece, read the metronome to find out how many "beats per minute" you played.

    • 2

      Convert the value per note into "notes per beat." Use the following values to figure out how many "notes per beat" each note is worth:

      - For a quarter note, it is worth 1 note per beat.
      - For an 8th note, it is worth 2 notes per beat.
      - For an 8th note triplet, it is worth 3 notes per beat.
      - For a 16th note, it is worth 4 notes per beat.
      - For a 16th note triplet, it is worth 6 notes per beat.
      - For a 32nd note, it is worth 8 notes per beat.

    • 3

      Multiply the notes per beat in your piece by the beats per minute you played. For example, if you played 32nd notes at 160 beats per minute, you have 1280 total notes.

    • 4

      Divide your total notes by 60 to get notes per second. Using our previous example, dividing 1280 by 60 means the musician was playing 21.33 notes per second.

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