I’m having a bit of trouble getting my head around the metronome functions in association with the click button tempo in the transport panel. No problems at all with common time signatures like 2/2, 3/2, ¾ and 4/4 but in compound time signatures like 6/8, 10/8 or 12/8 these two functions are not so straightforwrd.
I understand the metronome setup panel perfectly well, but the transport panel click button puzzles me. What does the tempo listed next to the click button refer to? Does it refer to the count base set in the metronome setup panel or does it always refer only to the number of quarter notes per minute in any time signature? I can find nothing in the user manual which explains this.
For example If I have a score in 6/8 time with a dotted quarter marked at 120 per minute, how would I set the count base and time signature in the metronome setup panel and the click button tempo in the transport panel to give me a click:
The click is on the 1/8th notes, but the tempo is the 1/4 notes. I’ll check later, not in a position to confirm this.
The count base in metronome setup seems to relate to which note in the bar gets clicked. The first digit of the count base goes from 1 to 64 and the second digit goes 2,4,8,16. So it seems that you can set it to click on every ½ note (1/2) right through to every 64th 16th note (64/16) or any combination in between.
So in answer to my option (b) above, you can set it to click on every dotted ¼ in 6/8 time by setting the count base to 3/8, namely a click every 3rd 1/8th note, but then what on earth do you do with the click tempo if it relates only to ¼ notes? If this is the way the click tempo works then it’s totally useless for compound time signatures.
I can’t believe that this otherwise excellent software has omitted such a basic facility as a metronome capable of counting compound time signatures. So what am I missing?