Changing time sigs?

Cubase
1

Yeah! Finally made it past the border patrols! They don’t make it easy to get into this place do they?

Anyway, to business…

I’ve dabbled a bit with cubase for a few years off and on, but never really got it sussed. I’ve just upgraded from SL2 to CS5 for another serious attempt and have got a bit further but seem to have hit another roadbloack, and would appreciate some help.

I’ve found the tempo and time sig tracks (massive improvement over SL2 :sunglasses: ) but the Sig track doesn’t seem work as I would expect. I have RTFM (several times) but the said F’ing M focusses mostly on tempo, not time sig.

So I’ve created a project in 4/4 and recorded a few audio tracks but now I want to try the ‘middle 8’ in 5/4 (bars 70 to 77 if helps to visualise). Steps were:

  1. Created a Sig track.
  2. Added a 4/4/ time sig event at bar 70 and another at 78 - no change so far, as expected.
  3. Set the tracks to Musical timebase.
  4. Cut the audio into seperate sections so that none of them go across the time sig events.
  5. Changed the time sig event at bar 70 to 5/4. The ruler pushed out as expected to accomodate the longer 5/4 bars, then changed back to 4/4 at 78 as intended.

But, the audio clips stayed where they were on screen and in ‘time’ (so effectively moved to an earlier position relative to the bars).

I want the clips that started at bar 78 to remain at 78 when I change the sig for the section before. What am I missing?

In case I’ve misunderstood the time modes I’ve already tried switching the tracks to ‘linear’ mode and repeating the process but the behaviour is exactly the same.

I’ve also tried creating a tempo track and varying the tempo in the same section. In this case it works as I would expect - in ‘linear’ mode the audio events originally at bar 78 move relative to the bars, but in ‘musical’ mode they remain where they are.

So why doesn’t it work this way for time sig changes? :confused: This is frying my brain - any suggestions?

2

You aren’t actually doing anything wrong. But Cubase, in Musical Timebase, locks to beats, not bars (and by merely changing the time signature, you haven’t changed the number of beats). You’d need also to insert 8 empty beats somewhere during the 5/4 section, so that the next audio clip would start at the beginning of the “new” bar #78. Easiest is just to drag that event.

3

Thanks Vic

The ‘number of beats’ explanation makes sense of the whole thing (shame it’s not the way the manual explains it! :wink: )

I used your ‘insert beats’ tip to fix it as I had multiple events after the time change - this seemed the simplest way to move them all together…

Yea! I’m back in business… :sunglasses:

4

There is a tool on the Time Sig track panel that allows you to do the inserts in conjunction with your sig. The tool icon sort of looks like |-|-|-|