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Music, art & photography · course 90 of 105

The Music Producer’s Maths Toolkit

Convert any BPM into delay times, any piano key into its frequency in hertz, and level changes into decibels: the studio maths producers look up every day.

4 modules

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What it teaches

The studio maths producers look up every day: turning BPM into delay times in milliseconds (beats, eighths, dotted and triplet notes, bars), finding any piano key’s frequency in hertz (A4 = 440 Hz, octaves double), and decibels for power and for amplitude (why doubling is 3 dB in one place and 6 dB in another). The AI asks 3 questions, places you, shows a short card per module, then gives you one problem at a time and checks your answer against the answer key (every number in it computed by script).

How long

34 items. About 20-50 rounds plus a 12-item final: 1-2 sessions (19 rounds for a strong student, 49 for a beginner; not timed with a real learner). The tutor gives a one-line save code at the end of each session.

The modules

4 modules, drilled one item at a time.

  1. M0

    The words

    The words

  2. M1

    Tempo in milliseconds

    Tempo in milliseconds

  3. M2

    Pitch in hertz

    Pitch in hertz

  4. M3

    Decibels

    Decibels

Before it teaches, it asks

  1. 1
    What do you make music with (a DAW, hardware, an instrument), and what do you want this maths for: delay times, tuning, gain?
  2. 2
    At 120 BPM, how long is one beat (a quarter note) in milliseconds?
  3. 3
    A signal’s amplitude (voltage) is multiplied by 2. What is the change in dB? (2 decimals)

What’s exact, and what isn’t

Show

Straight from the course’s own notes.

Computed by script
Every ms, Hz and dB Key, rounded as each item says; the script also reproduces the Decibel page’s 3.0103 dB and 6.0206 dB. Every key was also written by hand first and had to match.
Sourced
Tempo, A440, the piano-key formula, octaves, both decibel rules, the dot rule and triplets from Wikipedia, 12 short quotes matched word for word (10 on 2026-10-10, 2 more on 2026-10-11).
Not in it yet
Mixing advice, loudness (LUFS), sample rates, other tunings, swing.