Jim Roseberry

tom1Sharke is saying that if the eighth note is the reference note in 6/8 time (and it should be) and if the BPM is 60, in one minute there should be 60 eighth notes; Sonar's metronome plays 120 eighth notes during this time. I was under the impression this was true in all DAWs

Thanks for clarifying!  But I have a question.To have the tempo consistent when switching time signatures (in the same piece), wouldn't the BPM (quarter or eighth) would have to remain constant?Otherwise, you'd have to insert half/double time tempo changes each time you change meter. Guess this is open to interpretation as to what is best/correct.   I've honestly never given the metronome a second thought.I started with a MMT-8 (hardware sequencer)... and moved to Cakewalk Pro Audio 4.0

It would be better if tempo and meter were tied together in the same dialog, so that instead of inserting tempo changes and meter changes as separate events, you instead inserted a unified tempo/meter event in which you could define a change in tempo, meter and time base all in one.

Jim Roseberry
 
Guess this is open to interpretation as to what is best/correct.   

Consider the problem from the perspective of plug-in developers whose devices have to do tempo-syncing.  Thank goodness everything clock-related in our DAWs is quarter-note based, at least internally.  Can you imagine how difficult it would be if every tempo-sync-capable device had to juggle time signitures in the process?  All the designers would apply their own interpretations and nothing would work consistently, in all probability.

On a related note, another thing Sonar doesn't do right is swing time.  You can set the metronome OK and quantize to 1/8 triplets, but the Staff View is a total mess and writing swing time in Staff View is a nightmare.
 
If you want a quarter to equal 3 eighths and you have a swing pattern of 1/4, 1/8, 1/4, 1/8, etc. I find you have to right click and edit notes in the Staff View at the tick level.  Sonar does not seem to want to do this right.

You would not have to switch.  In real life, going from a measure of 3/4 to a measure of 6/8, everything would still sound the same, as it is how it is written that is changing.  You would fit the 6 eighth notes into the same time counting that you had with the 3/4 measure.  An eighth note in either measure would play for the same actual time value.
 
MY issue is with the Step Sequencer not having the ability to know anything about a meter base of an eighth note, so it forces me to do everything as quarter notes and that then forces me to have to double the tempo and halve it when switching back.
 
Normally, in scores, tempo is written as quarter=144 (symbol for quarter there, sorry), or quarter=98, or whatever.  And in THAT sense, all meters in the song would be based on the beats per minute as pertaining to quarter notes.  So then, a measure of 6/8 would still be based on a quarter note, in terms of beats per minute.
 
Bob Bone
 

dmbaer
Consider the problem from the perspective of plug-in developers whose devices have to do tempo-syncing.  Thank goodness everything clock-related in our DAWs is quarter-note based, at least internally.  Can you imagine how difficult it would be if every tempo-sync-capable device had to juggle time signitures in the process?  All the designers would apply their own interpretations and nothing would work consistently, in all probability.

OK, I am pretty ignorant about what a tempo synch device is. If it is an external MIDI controlled unit, then synchronization with a "tempo" sending midi clock or MIDI beat messages at a standard timebase (quarter note) would seem to be a big advantage. A tempo change message could then reset the frequency (decrease the duration) of the MIDI beats, and keep the devices in synch. But it seems that the developers of many of the plugins/synths that offer synchronization to the "beat" intend to produce an output the "pumps" with the musical beat, not the duration of a quarter note. Sonar can clearly extract that groove/beat information from the time signature, or it would not change the metronome accent when the time signature changes. Is that information transferred from the sequencer, or do the synths have to extract it or be programmed to follow it separately?
 
I am more sympathetic to the argument that it is just a pain to have the "tempo" setting in Sonar follow the time signature beat duration, if you are going to allow time signature changes in the same piece. A musician reading an MM=60 at the start of a score that starts as 4/4 probably expects the tempo (measured by the duration of 1 quarter note=2 eighth notes) to stay the same when he encounters a 6/8 measure subsequently. That is certainly easier than trying to re-set his internal groove to the newly recalculated beat, and if the composer wanted a tempo change, he should probably indicate it with another MM or other indication, or just by writing notes of longer duration. The metronome mark or other tempo indication should probably apply to the piece as a whole for simplicity. Sonar does allow insertion of tempo changes, independently of time signature changes, and that gives the optimum in flexibility.
 
Perhaps the best and easiest integrated solution for people who find calculating the tempo for other than quarter note delimited time signatures would be to just add an option to set the note duration that defines the tempo so for example tempo box [160.00] and another box tempo applies to [quarter, eighth etc note]. The interface would be affected, but Sonar would then recalculate the tempo to use a standard quarter note duration internally. I do not expect that to happen, as the same effect can be easily achieved with a pencil and the back of an envelope.
 
 
 
 

Jeff Evans
It sounds to me it is the way Sonar is handling time signatures and it is probably more complex than it should be. I can give you some insight as to how Studio One handles time signatures. Firstly the tick resolution or pulses per quarter note should not have anything to do with it and that is the case with Studio One that is for sure. Putting my metronome into 6/8 creates 6 eighth note clicks per bar and at the right BPM of 104 as sharke mentions in his OP. The first one can be accented or have a different sound too which is handy. If I put my time sig into say 7/8 or 9/8 I hear the same thing 7 or 9 eighth note clicks per bar with the first one accented. If I set 12/8 at 120 BPM I hear all twelve clicks per bar so I really get the triplet thing. It is silly to not hear the subdivisions. They are there for a reason. You can still feel it or count it any way you want but the actual number of audible metronome clicks is directly related to the number set in the top part of the time sig. That to me seems like the right way to do it.

This is exactly how it should work.

Jim Roseberry
 
If you change the BPM counter of the metronome (instead of leaving constant), wouldn't you have to insert tempo changes any time you changed meter (say from 4/4 to 6/8 and back)?

right, but it's not just a tempo change, it's a abstracted tempo change - so you still need to remember what the actual tempo is and what it's set to in the project which is sonar's interpretation of tempo.  

konradh
On a related note, another thing Sonar doesn't do right is swing time.  You can set the metronome OK and quantize to 1/8 triplets, but the Staff View is a total mess and writing swing time in Staff View is a nightmare.
 
If you want a quarter to equal 3 eighths and you have a swing pattern of 1/4, 1/8, 1/4, 1/8, etc. I find you have to right click and edit notes in the Staff View at the tick level.  Sonar does not seem to want to do this right.

not sure i follow konrad.  a dotted quarter note isn't an 1/8th triplet so i'm having a bit of trouble visualizing what you're trying to accomplish.  when i do 6/8 time in staff view and do a 1/4 1/8 1/4 1/8 pattern i don't have any adverse effects, the number of ticks comes out ok, even if i throw in a string of eighth note trips they show up with a duration of 320 ticks.  

slartabartfast
Perhaps the best and easiest integrated solution for people who find calculating the tempo for other than quarter note delimited time signatures would be to just add an option to set the note duration that defines the tempo so for example tempo box [160.00] and another box tempo applies to [quarter, eighth etc note]. The interface would be affected, but Sonar would then recalculate the tempo to use a standard quarter note duration internally. I do not expect that to happen, as the same effect can be easily achieved with a pencil and the back of an envelope.

 
This is how I have been reading that Pro Tools handles this.  Can anybody out there confirm that?

Swamptooth, I may not be explaining it well (sorry) but I am describing swing time exactly as it is.
 
Some copyists will write swing as a quarter followed by an eighth, but they have to put a note at the top of the music to explain that it's a triplet or swing feel.  Swing time is really 12/8 with a quarter followed by an eighth four times. although it can be written as 4/4 with triplet 1/8s.  In other words, the rhythm is trip-uh-let, trip-uh-let, trip-uh-let, trip-uh-let; but in each case instead of three triplet eighths, you have a quarter and an eighth.  In 120 ticks per beat, this would be 80-40, 80-40, 80-40, 80-40.  Imaginee 4-sets of triplet 1/8s, but in each set, the first two 1/8s are tied. 
 
If you write straight 1/8s on a hi-hat in Sonar and then quantize them to 1/8 | quantize start and duration | swing 66%, you will hear what I mean.  This is a classic country two-step and an old rock-and-roll beat.
 
Sorry for the out-of-date example, but I wanted to find something really obvious, so check out She's Not You by Elvis Presley:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBbygwXib_o