FR: Better metronome function, please

[rlindsey0]

Specifically, better handling of the way bpm interfaces with non x/4 meters.

By x/4, I mean the common ones like 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, etc.

AFAIK, the Waveform metronome doesn't seem to know that you can, and in some cases would much prefer to, count things other than quarter notes. If this has changed, I'm unaware of it.

An example is x/8 meters, like 6/8 or 12/8. Those are typically counted either by the eighth note (if slower) or by the dotted quarter note, since the characteristic of this meter is that it typically has two major beats (the dotted quarters). You would hardly ever count 6/8 according to quarter notes; if you did, 6/8 would be the wrong meter, and you should generally use 3/4 instead. There are also x/16 meters, as well as even x/32 meters, albeit rare.

Yet Waveform doesn't allow you to specify anything but a quarter note as the beat counted. This is counter to common usage in musical writing, where it's extremely common to see tempo markings where, for example, an eighth note is 160, or a half note is 100, or a dotted quarter is 80. This makes it harder to specify the real tempo--that is, how you would count if you were counting the song off.

Also, it makes it hard to sync, say, 6/8 loops to the tempo in Waveform. At least IME, you basically have to lie about the tempo to the loop, render it to audio, and then shift the tempo back to where it really should be. Possible, but needlessly cumbersome.

So it should be possible in Waveform, in addition to specifying the beat, to specify what note value is carrying the beat. That should include, besides the current default quarter note, the eighth note, the dotted quarter, the half note, and possibly the dotted half and dotted eighth (just for safety; probably won't be used as often). Again, this is standard in music notation.

This will probably have implications for how you describe and implement quantization. ATM, it's described as divisions of a beat, and the beat is always a quarter note. But if the beat can be sometimes an eighth note and sometimes a dotted quarter or whatever, that will probably have to change.

I do know that various workarounds exist--for example, rendering 12/8 as 4/4 on a triplet grid--but they're not entirely satisfactory, especially when it comes to syncing with plugins and loops.

Just my $0.02.

[spoontechnique]

I think you've touched on a couple separate issues. One is the metronome and the click track, which are a bit barebones.

But the second is using imported loops/midi in Waveform. You're definitely right. Compared to other DAWs (Cubase/Ableton/Reaper) it's hard to manage imported stuff in different time signatures. I gave up on a project recently for the simple and dumb reason that I couldn't figure out how to get a MIDI clip to the tempo I wanted. It was a clip at 80 and I couldn't for the life of me manipulate it in a way so that it would fit in a 150 song. There's no option to double or halve the values of midi clips, or anything like that. You can't change the import tempo of a midi clip or what tempo it should play at. Pretty rough oversight.

[Stuttaton]

I second this. I sometimes make songs in 9/8 and a click every 1/8 is rather useless. It's just too fast to count. It would be much better to be able to select a click on every 3/8. As a workaround, you can always program a drum clip with the clicks you want.