Jeff Evans
What I like about this too is that you have not been influenced by anything in terms of coming up with the melody and its timing. You have done that first and now you are figuring out the time sig etc to fit. The better way to do it.

robert_e_bone

swamptooth
@bob - 
i'm at the point with step sequencer that i just set up the time sig to 7/4 and remembering for that section that each quarter note is actually an eighth note in reality.  that way the measures line up and it's just a slight amount of conversion that i need to do in my head. 

I want to make sure I understand what you posted.  Can you elaborate on this?  To make 7/4 play as is it was recorded as 7/8 you will have to double the tempo of the song at the point of the 7/4.  Is that what you meant?  (because it IS what I meant).  Just want to make sure we are on the same page.
 
Bob Bone
 

Tom Riggs
Jamstix has the option to sync at half or double the host tempo.

dmbaer
 
Normally, musicians express tempo as "the amount of quarter notes in every minute (ie, time period)". This is the opposite of the way that the MIDI file format expresses it.
 
When musicians refer to a "beat" in terms of tempo, they are referring to a quarter note (ie, a quarter note is always 1 beat when talking about tempo, regardless of the time signature. Yes, it's a bit confusing to non-musicians that the time signature's "beat" may not be the same thing as the tempo's "beat" -- it won't be unless the time signature's beat also happens to be a quarter note. But that's the traditional definition of BPM tempo). To a musician, tempo is therefore always "how many quarter notes happen during every minute". Musicians refer to this measurement as BPM (ie, Beats Per Minute). So a tempo of 100 BPM means that a musician must be able to play 100 steady quarter notes, one right after the other, in one minute. That's how "fast" the "musical tempo" is at 100 BPM. It's very important that you understand the concept of how a musician expresses "musical tempo" (ie, BPM) in order to properly present tempo settings to a musician, and yet be able to relate it to how the MIDI file format expresses tempo.

Jim Roseberry
OK guys... I'm confused after reading thru these posts.   
 
When you're in 6/8 time, the click is *supposed* to be on 8th notes (not quarters or other subdivisions).
Six eighth note ticks per measure
X2 does exactly this...
It feels like the tempo is doubled... but it hasn't actually changed.

dmbaer

slartabartfast
I had seen the roadrunner stuff previously, and I must admit that while it may be true that MIDI always sees tempo in terms of quarter notes, it is not at all clear that musicians always do so.

No argument from me on that point.  I was simply trying to demonstrate why tempo is quarter-note-based in the context of MIDI.  It goes back to the MIDI standard file format, host clock behavior and probably a bunch of other stuff.  It's easy to see how sequencer/DAW developers might prefer that view of things in preference to the less formal concept where beats are the lower number in the time signature.