Ableton Forum

Has anyone else experienced a problem when trying to tap a tempo in 6/8? Ableton does not seem to like taping the 8th notes in 6/8, it seems line the tap temp is locked in on 4/4 time even when I change the time signature to 6/8. Thoughts?

I think for the purpose of finding the tempo 3/4 is the same as 6/8 so why not just tap out the quarter notes?

yeah. Live considers 6/8 has 6 beats.

[quote="SuburbanThug"]I think for the purpose of finding the tempo 3/4 is the same as 6/8 so why not just tap out the quarter notes?[/quote

If they did that wouldn't they need to use the 2x option in the track/clip? Never worked in odd/different time signatures, maybe I should see what whackyness can happen!

Mike

7/8 is pretty fun.

As best as I can tell the tap button is still tapping out quarter notes even though the time signature is 6/8. For 6/8 time a quarter note is 1/3 of a measure which makes it really weird when you hear the tempo you just tapped out. It ends up being about twice as fast as you intended. I saw someone else discussing this in a video and his workaround was to use 6/4 time instead. It will give you the tempo you are looking for that you tapped out.

I suppose you could tap it out in 6/8 and then just manually halve the bpm that it calculates.

Very convenient to start a song on stage...
We need a preference file for this please !

Yes, it seems the 6/4 approach worked. Such a simple fix but it has helped me out immensley. Thanks.

I have the same problem as the OP. It would be really nice if there was a way to denote that we're in 6/8 time, but we want the dotted-quarter to determine the tempo. This is common in sheet music, and very common in 6/8 time. If you're counting a song that subdivides the tempo as 1 2 3 4 5 6, then it's very unnatural to tap the tempo or count it off as "the same as 3/4."

Stokes wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:28 pm

I have the same problem as the OP. It would be really nice if there was a way to denote that we're in 6/8 time, but we want the dotted-quarter to determine the tempo. This is common in sheet music, and very common in 6/8 time. If you're counting a song that subdivides the tempo as 1 2 3 4 5 6, then it's very unnatural to tap the tempo or count it off as "the same as 3/4."

Yeah, computers and compound meters are still not good friends, even after all these years. Tempos based on beats with a 2:1 subdivision are all fine, but you start throwing in beats with 3:1 divisions (i.e. dotted quarter note) and things break. I don't know of a single DAW that does this correctly, and I've never really been sure whether it's only a technical issue or if it's also compounded (*ahem*) by the fact that a lot of people (even musicians) don't really seem to understand how compound meters work.

One workaround is to simply set the meter to 2/4 and then turn the triplet grid on in the piano roll.