Tempo markings and BPM

The question every music student types into a search box

What BPM is Andante? It is one of the most searched questions about tempo, and the honest answer is that there is no single number. Tempo markings were written to describe how a piece should feel. Allegro means cheerful, Andante means walking, Adagio means at ease. The speed was supposed to follow from the character, not the other way round.

That would be fine if everyone shared the same instinct, but they do not. An Allegro by Haydn and an Allegro by Brahms sit in different places, and two pianists playing the same Andante will often land 15 BPM apart. Still, a couple of centuries of performance practice have produced rough agreement about where each word lives. That agreement is a useful starting point, as long as you treat it as one.

Tempo markings and approximate BPM ranges

The table lists the main markings from slowest to fastest. The ranges are the ones BeatDig uses on its tempo pages. You will find slightly different boundaries in textbooks and on the dial of a mechanical metronome, so a number near the edge of a band can reasonably be called either name.

Notice how wide the bands are. Allegro alone spans almost 30 BPM. A movement full of running sixteenth notes and a movement built from quarter notes can both be marked Allegro and still sound right at very different numbers.

The small words that move the number

Markings rarely appear alone. The qualifiers around them shift the tempo, and missing one can put you in the wrong band entirely.

Molto, assai, non troppo

Molto and assai both mean very, so they push a marking further in its own direction: Allegro molto is a fast Allegro, Adagio molto a slow Adagio. Non troppo and ma non troppo mean not too much, which pulls a marking back toward the middle. Allegro ma non troppo is a good reason to start at the bottom of the Allegro band rather than the top.

Mid-piece you will also see più mosso (more motion, a little faster), meno mosso (less motion, a little slower) and poco, which simply means a little.

Allegretto, Larghetto and the Andantino problem

The endings -etto and -ino make a word smaller. Allegretto is a little Allegro, so it is slower than Allegro. Larghetto is a little Largo, so it is faster than Largo. In both cases the diminutive moves the tempo one step toward the middle.

Andantino is the exception that trips people up. Composers and theorists have disagreed for two hundred years about whether a little Andante is faster or slower than Andante. Most modern players take it as slightly faster, but the notes on the page are a better guide than the dictionary.

Reading metronome marks: what M.M. means

When a score gives you a number, such as M.M. ♩ = 120, the question is settled. M.M. stands for Mälzel's Metronome, after Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, who patented and sold the pendulum metronome around 1815. Beethoven was among the first major composers to adopt it, publishing metronome marks for his symphonies in 1817, and the habit of writing tempo as a number spread from there.

Always check which note the number refers to. A half note at 60 is 120 on a metronome counting quarter notes. In 6/8 or 12/8, a dotted quarter at 60 means 180 eighth notes per minute, so in BeatDig you would choose 6/8 and set 180 BPM to get the same pulse.

A printed number is still not a commandment. Musicians have argued about whether Beethoven's own markings are playably fast since the day they were published. For practice, treat the printed tempo as the destination and start somewhere below it.

Ritardando, accelerando and other tempo changes

Ritardando (rit.) and rallentando (rall.) mean gradually slower; accelerando (accel.) means gradually faster. A tempo tells you to return to the previous speed, and Tempo I (Tempo primo) sends you back to the opening tempo. Rubato gives you permission to stretch and compress time within the beat.

A metronome cannot follow any of these, but it is still useful around them. The weak spot in most tempo changes is not the change itself; it is the arrival. Players slow down nicely and then come back from the ritardando at a different speed from the one they left.

• Play the ritardando with the click off, then switch the click back on at the a tempo bar and check that you have landed on the original tempo.
• For an accelerando, decide the start and end tempos first, and make sure the passage is clean at both numbers before you practise the transition.
• Count how many bars the change lasts and write down roughly how many BPM each bar should move. A gradual change is easier to keep even when you know its rate.
• For stepped changes like più mosso, set a separate BPM for each section and loop the two bars either side of the join.

Turning a marking into a practice tempo

Start with the band from the table, then use the qualifiers to pick the upper or lower half. Next, find the fastest notes in the piece. Dense sixteenths point to the bottom of the band; long stretches of quarters and eighths can sit higher. If the time signature is cut time (2/2), the beat is a half note, so the metronome number for quarter notes doubles.

Then listen. Put on a recording you like and use Tap BPM to tap along for a few bars; you will have the performer's tempo in seconds. Measure two or three recordings and you will see how far apart good performances of the same Andante can be, which makes it much easier to decide where yours belongs.

Once you have a target, begin practice below it. BeatDig remembers your last BPM and time signature, so tomorrow can pick up exactly where today stopped. The marking tells you what the music should feel like; the metronome number measures how far you are from getting there.

Read next

• How to practise slowly with a metronome

  Slow practice is not the easy version of fast practice. It is a different skill.

  October 5, 2026 Read the guide

• How to practise polyrhythms

  Counting two pulses at once rarely works. Count the one grid they share.

  September 22, 2026 Read the guide

• Practising swing and shuffle with a metronome

  Swung eighths are not uneven straight eighths. They live on a different grid.

  September 22, 2026 Read the guide