Time Signature?

I've gone over the Maschine Manual and Quick Start guide and I don't see any information on changing the Time Signature, only the Grid can be changed in the Step Editor. Unless, I'm missing something has anyone else encountered this issue?

 

You can do this from the software... Just look to the top of your screen, just left of center.

There is a little transport bar with the project tempo, swing amount and time signature slots. Just click the TS slot and set it to your desired timing.

 

Thanks, I will look into this.

 

Strange! I can click inside the tempo and swing boxes and change both, but I click inside the Time Signature box and nothing happens? It won't allow me to change it. Help!

 

try left-clicking over the number you wish to change and whilst holding the button, move your mouse up or down to change the value....

 

Okay, thanks, I'll give a shot!

 

Awesome! It worked thanks a bunch!

 

ok, I did that personaly, and for some reason it' not actualy changing the time signature of the beat, just the way it's written, if you understand what I'm saying.

I have a beat that seems to me to be in 15/8, but when I program it it seems to be playing 1.8 measures in that timing... but I need it to play 2, or some whole number, it's not actualy changing the time signature, it's just putting the grids elsewhere on the screen, and playing a precentage of the measure. In a way I'm still stuck in 4/4.

 

yeah, i've heard this is a problem, too. Seems like locking the maschine into 4/4 time is a significant liability.

can anyone shed more light on this?

 

as of right now there doesn't seem to be a way to do this or change the tempo automaticly mid sequence, like between scenes or anything if there is I haven't found it, sowhat my plan was to fix the solution is seperating everything into indevidual beats that sound like they're in whatever time signature I want, by either playing them freely without the step recorder, or making the steps small enough for it to sound right. recording everything at the tempo I want them to be, onto cubase, then using cubase to sequence the beats into the track indevidualy... but this is a hell of a lot more work than it should be, I spent a lot of money on this program and feel this small menu downfall sullies the good name of the rest of it by forcing me to overcomplicate the recording process, just to change time signature or tempo mid song, disalowing me to run what I want to run as a song sequenced by the in program sequencer.

mabye it's just me, trying to make weird music nobody will like anyway, instead of just sticking to the normal electronic 4/4 beats. Mabye there's an option somewhere and I'm not finding it, I didn't find it in any of the tutorial things nor can I in the instruction manual.

 

Time Sig

Changing Time Signature should not change the absolute placement of events in a timeline. Instead, it would change how events are represented in a musical score.

In a sequencer things may be different depending on how it was programmed. Since the Maschine sequencer forces you to select a pattern duration in bars, then changing time signature will have a sonic impact because it will also change the duration of a bar. In culture neutral sequencers like logic, changing time sig would never change the absolute placement of events on the timeline, usually a smpte position. But because tools like Maschine and others are designed for dance music, then there is a bias for most functions to be used in even denominations.

Changing a time sig will affect the metronome and absolute length of a bar, which if looped will have a different looping point. But it would not, should not change the relative positions of any events within any bar.

Generally the assumption that certain beats are in certain time signatures is an amateur viewpoint because its perspective is only in one dimension, that of the listener at that time who is being influenced by representation, not the data itself.

Here is an analogy- a procedure for synthesizing ribonucleic acid rendered in 2 different languages. Lets say Arabic and Chinese. The languages differ substantially, but if the writing is unambiguous and technically sound, the result and engineered product should be exactly the same. The language of representing the procedure should have no impact. Its the same with time signature. Its a way of framing events that is convenient to express musical ideas, demonstrate emphasis and most importantly like any function in musical notation; minimize the effort to read and understand while avoiding ambiguity and giving a group ensemble a simple way of working together.

Writing in odd signatures is not strange though if you want to capture an audience you may have to manipulate more than simply time signature to keep them interested...and liquid. Ka-ching!

I also am usually disappointed when I come across a tool that seems restricted in this regard. I enjoy the natural rythmic inflections in speech and using those as nuclei for composition. Or if you have ever experienced the challenge of adapting poetry to music you are whabam hit with some tough choices regarding signature and eventually its futility. However if you want to set 4 voices in harmony to some non pentameter poetry you better damn well have some way of letting your singers know when to start and stop singing the lines. That does not involve angry gesticulations or rehearsing to the point of animal memory. There is quite a bit of religious ceremony that proceeds like this with multiple participants all intoning the same words in repetition. The syllable count per line may not follow a pattern at all.

And there is also a certain level of music where even implying a single standard repetition length is crude, or not as floating and bouyant. In jazz and especially expressive classical music, there can be found periods of transformation or moments of rhythmic ambiguity where you can't even tell, or hear more importantly; where the bars begin and end. And thats a mark of good music - you should not be able to hear the bars or sense the influence of time signature in some cases. Nothing wrong if it happens, but if you want to make music that sounds like nature and sounds like how we talk instead of tick tock ride my clock dancing dancing in the flock.

123456
12345
1234
123
12
1
12
123
1234
12345
123456 : |

My hope for a percussion tool in 2009 would have involved alot of warping tricks and I don't mean audio warping like abes live. I mean tempo curves, deccelerandos, accelerandos and tempo functions like shorten envelope decay based on note density for rolls. Basically a graph that you can draw on that is locked in a period of absolute time, but whose curve you can change. For example if compressed the beat in the first half, it should be expanded on the second half as a the first primordial example to still come back around and hit the 1. If you pull your finger across wet glass it makes a rubbing sound like a note. If you look closely at the wet glass you can find where your finger stopped and then skipped forward again, many times per second to produce that sound. Imagine that inside a beat where compression and expansion of time can occur, while retaining an absolute reference. In logic there is a tool called tempo operations that can do some of this, and combined with function lock smpte positions can let you use multiple times sigs or ways to make some really lonely music. David Bowie in labyrinth does that trick juggling the balls that looks like a wave. Tick tock straight up is old school and so is slop and 'grooves'. A more modern sound will express curves.

Thanks for letting me write!

jonathan adams leonard

 

thanks for the viewpoints, which in a way help and don't help my original problems and arguments but do a great job of overcomplicating them to certain people, but simplifying them to others, haha, if you understand what I mean there.

I understand that beats aren't exactly in a time signature, and all of what you're saying, and as I stated in a previous post, I could sequence the music together to make it sound right but that would involve a lot more work than if they allowed me to convey my sounds in the language of a different time signature absolutely. The way it is set up as is as I said, when I change to other signatures that aren't multiples of 4 beats essentialy, I can only loop in fractions of measures, thus forcing me to do extra work, I'm not saying that it's impossible to express my ideas in the signatures and tempos provided, just saying it's more work, since I'm not making dance music.

my real problem is with the on board sequencer, it doesn't allow me to change the tempo of the music between parts, also, I can't actively play portions of measures, which would be fantastic, especialy given the description of your piece arrangement there, and yes still I realise that all these ideas are possible to recreate with the tools, but there are just small pieces of the language you're forced to use that make it a lot more time consuming to convey your idea.

as of right now I'm still trying to get this thing smoothed out to the point that you can't tell the measures from each other at certain points of it, but I mean getting my bass drum mic in working order, and just playing them on the drum set 3 feet behind me may end up being the easiest way, I just thought this whole thing would be fun to try out, also quieter for my roomate.

also, based simply on your reply I'd love to hear any music you make sleen, as you're obviously pretty knowledgable, and I'm curious about sounds you enjoy making.... and what david bowie is doing is called contact juggling, I juggled for a while, and it's hard as hell...

 

agree

I totally agree with what you are asking for. Absolutely scenes should have their own tempi...I accomplish this in kore which can store a different tempo for each performance preset which kicks out a program change to a maschine scene. But for working in standalone I would seriously groove on scenes having a storable tempo value. I enjoy switching between scenes and include 'bad' scenes or scenes that have messed up stuff because when you switch into and out of them they can add momentary flavour. Same with differing tempi....not only can we imagine switching to a half double or triplet beat, but we can imagine each scene getting slightly faster in a progression, or slamming down into an outro that is completely out. There are lots of possibilities.

Also I think being able to freely alter the looppoint or duration is essential. But this may be limited to a degree by the fact that the engine may be made for midi and not audio in its timing. Whatever, you should be able to make any time sig and length you want. Anything less seems like a toy.

The software is still somewhat young so maybe these things can be considered and accomplished in a future update. I'll enter them myself as feature requests.

For some of my music feel free to visit www.jonathanleonard.com though there are some things coming soon. There is a tune in 2007 called reapers wish that gets alot of play because it was produced made in Linux. And for some strange reason is outrageously popular in China. I've been considering making Chinese pages...

Cheers,

jonathan adams leonard

 

Urban Jedi

Also BTW, the tune in the 2009 folder called Urban Jedi is a bounce from a single Maschine project. All sounds in the song were sampled via maschine and are from my son or myself beatboxing. I sampled his toy harmonica as well for the main theme. There are some ring mod sounding effects and others all made within maschine itself. In this case the song is all one tempo.

Best,

jonathan adams leonard

 

Hi, new user here.

Just done one full remix with Maschine and the client loved it. Great tool on the whole.

About to start a new track and its in 6/8.

To my surprise I adjusted the time sig and the metronome in Maschine counts in 6, or at least two 3's. I would love to be able to adjust the click accents and also click volume is this possible?

Anyhow, my frustration arrives at machines lack of ability to loop a pattern that is 2 bars of 6/8. To get it to work I had to set the engine to 4/4 and loop 3 bars...

It seems to only work in 4/4 properly. I have seen this mentioned so will work around it but please can NI have a go at fixing this? Just registering my concerns. If anyone has any tips and tricks concerning this issue - please shout out!

-Tom

 

you can adjust the click volume by holding shift and turning the volume knob

 

Thanks good to know!

-T

 

sorry I told you wrong its shift+play then turn the volume knob