Thank you to: zreynoldsp for the good explaination of BPM. He is correct. And I might add that you can also play 3 notes per beat (triplets) or 6 notes per beat or whatever you want...

Many virtuoso players give a very general guideline of playing 1,000 notes per minute or more to be at the virtuoso level. I'm just talking about sheer virtuosity (speed)...

Of course virtuosity (speed) is only one aspect of musicianship and for many (most) people such high levels of technical ability is not a goal (as they may into other things more than technique- which is of course cool).

I'm just throwing out the 1,000 notes per minute number for those that might be interested to know what many consider to be a sort of loose benchmark for a minimum virtuoso level when playing scales, arpeggios, etc. Of course there are certain things that are impposible to play at 1,000 notes per minute even for the most extreme virtuoso. Some things can't be measured by the 1,000 notes per minute standard as the techniques themselves don't lend themselvess to that type of possible speeds...so again the 1,000 notes thing is a very general benchmark for those that might be interested in that..

A basic breakdown of tempos would as follows:

16th notes at 250 BPM = 1,000 NPM (notes per minute)
16th note triplets at 166.66 bpm = 1,000 NPM (notes per minute)
32 notes at 125 BPM = 1,000 NPM (notes per minute)