Andante Tempo in BPM
Andante is commonly given as 76 to 108 BPM. The word means walking, and that image is the most literal of all the tempo markings.
Timing is scheduled on the Web Audio clock, so the beat stays steady even while the page is busy. Tap the tempo button in time with a song to set the BPM by ear. Keyboard: space starts and stops, up and down arrows change the tempo by 1 (hold shift for 10), escape stops.
The metronome above starts at 92 BPM, the middle of the Andante range. Drag the tempo anywhere between 76 and 108 to hear the whole range.
What Andante means
Andante translates as walking. Andante is the marking whose name actually tells you what to do: walk. An unhurried adult walking pace lands somewhere close to 100 to 120 steps per minute, which is why the upper part of the Andante range feels natural to almost everybody and why music at this tempo tends to feel neither slow nor fast.
It is also the widest of the common ranges, spanning more than thirty beats per minute, which is a clue that the term was doing a lot of work before numbers existed. Composers narrowed it with qualifiers instead: Andantino, Andante moderato, Andante con moto, each pulling the walk slightly faster or slower.
Why the BPM range is a convention, not a measurement
This is the part most tempo tables leave out. Italian tempo words were in general use for about a century before Maelzel's metronome made a beats-per-minute number practical at all, and the composers who wrote them never defined them numerically. Every published range, including the 76 to 108BPM given here, is somebody's later reconstruction, and different sources disagree by ten or twenty beats per minute at the edges.
Treat the number as a region and the word as the instruction. On a site that computes frequencies to two decimals it is worth being explicit about which figures are exact and which are conventional: the frequencies are exact, these ranges are not.
Where Andante sits against the other markings
| Marking | Means | Commonly quoted BPM |
|---|---|---|
| Largo | broad, wide | 40 to 60 |
| Adagio | at ease, comfortable | 66 to 76 |
| Andante | walking | 76 to 108 |
| Moderato | moderate | 108 to 120 |
| Allegro | cheerful, lively | 120 to 168 |
| Vivace | lively, vivacious | 168 to 176 |
| Presto | quick | 168 to 200 |
| Prestissimo | as quick as possible | 200 to 240 |
Exact tempos inside the Andante range
Each of these opens the metronome already running at that tempo, with its own notes on what the speed is used for.
Frequently asked questions
How many BPM is Andante?
Commonly 76 to 108 BPM. It is the broadest of the standard ranges, which is why composers so often add a qualifier such as Andantino or Andante con moto.
Does Andantino mean faster or slower than Andante?
This is genuinely ambiguous and has been for centuries. The diminutive can be read as a little slower or a little faster than Andante, and both readings appear in printed music, so context has to decide.
Other tempo markings
More timing tools
Frequencies on this page are computed at build time from twelve tone equal temperament with A4 = 440 Hz, using the twelfth root of two (about 1.059463) per semitone. Nothing is typed in by hand. See the full method and sources. Maintained by FusionStudios. Last reviewed: .