I’ve seen that, if not in all DAW’s, a lot of them (including Cubase) treat beats always as quarter notes, even if you set the time signature to, for example, 6/8.
I think this is because of the MIDI protocol: it works like that (beats are ALWAYS quarter notes, no matter which time signature is set). However, I had to figure out that if I want to work with compund times (treating beats as dotted quarters), I have to use the simple equivalent* and set the grid to triplets. Or, if I would like to treat the lower beat level as beats (“sub-beats”, the first subdivision) if I want the metronome to tick on each “sub-beat”, multiply bpm by 1.5** and leave time signature as the real one (6/8, 9/8 or 12/8).
If you worked with compund times (or even irregular ones) in DAW’s, what did you do and how was your experience? I’m curious about this.
*6/8 2/4
9/8 3/4
12/8 4/4
(when they are regular, I mean: 3+3, 3+3+3 and 3+3+3+3 eighths respectively)
**or: multiply by 3 but after divide by 2 (this is, the same as multiplying by 1.5)
Not necessarily. You can change the subdivisions of a measure by using click patterns. Here’s an example showing the grid of 6/8 subdivided into 3+3 eighth notes per measure:
Also, because 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4.
Whole note, half-note, quarter-note, eighth-note, sixteenth-note etc.
Or, in English, (I know, it’s Latin) semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver, semiquaver,… demisemihemidemisemiquaver (my personal favourite). Mensural notation
Oh, I see. Cubase offers a way to define the bar when setting the time signature. Cool! I’ve just tried it and works, it changes the metronome clicks AND the grid! This tool is available in Pro and Artist editions only, right? Also, does anyone know since which version exists this? I don’t think it was already included on Cubase 5.
I think this is a +1 for Cubase comparing with competition. Perhaps other pro DAW’s offer something to solve this, but I’m sure that not all of them.
According to the manuals, click patterns are indeed only available in Cubase Pro and Artist. If I remember correctly, they were introduced with Cubase 9.5 but I’m not sure. To me, it’s an essential feature I use all the time and am really missing it when I need to work with other DAWs.
However, I’ve noticed now that we still have the bpm problem here.
If I set the bpm to 90 and the time signature to 6/8 (with the click pattern ok), then the dotted quarter goes to real 60 bpm (because Cubase is counting quarters, not dotted quarters). So I still have to multiply 90 by 1.5 (135 bpm) to have real 90 bpm with 6/8.
Is there any way to “tell” Cubase that I want it to count the bpm with dotted quarter notes instead of quarters? (Or at least eighth notes)
Unfortunately, that’s not yet possible as far as I can tell. The beats are always relative to the base note value specified by the denominator of the time signature, e.g. 1/4 or 1/8. So the tempo for compound meters must actually be calculated as you did. For me, it’s not a big deal but it’s somewhat annoying.
Hopefully, there will be a feature that does that automatically in a future release.
2/4
