4/4 to 6/8 with no changes

[John Gessner]

A third of the way through composing this piece when realize the piece is in 4/4 but almost entirely eighth triplets. How do I change change to 6/8 or 12/8 and leave everything alone except take out the triplet signs.

Hoping there is a quick fix otherwise have to start over completely.

 

John

Blues Trio 4-4 to 6-8.cwp

[user 905133]

On 7/20/2020 at 5:13 PM, John Gessner said:

A third of the way through composing this piece when realize the piece is in 4/4 but almost entirely eighth triplets. How do I change change to 6/8 or 12/8 and leave everything alone except take out the triplet signs.

Do you mean just changing how the existing notes are divided on the page?

Not sure this is what you want; all I did was:

from Project > Insert Meter/Key Change . . . .

EDIT [2020-07-21]: For some reason the images seem to have disappeared since they were posted yesterday.  In any case, its of no significance because evidently the file opened up incorrectly on my PC under Cakewalk.

Edited July 22, 2020 by User 905133
To comment on the missing pix.

[Gary Bradley]

Hi John

To change the time signature of the whole track, set your song pointer to 01:00:00 and select Project > Insert Meter/Key Change > change Beats per measure and Beat Value. It's easily undone if it doesn't work. Check it in Staff View.  6/8 & 12/8 will give different notation. 

Best,

Gary

[John Gessner]

Thanks but tried that before. Doesn't work. It keeps the same triplet designations and so on. Notice User 905133's solution results in something barely related to the original.

Edited July 21, 2020 by John Gessner

[chris.r]

I think you have to scale the length (both starting times AND duration) of all events in your project by 150%, in addition to the meter change.

Edited July 21, 2020 by chris.r

[user 905133]

6 hours ago, John Gessner said:

Thanks but tried that before. Doesn't work. It keeps the same triplet designations and so on. Notice User 905133's solution results in something barely related to the original.

Sorry it didn't work for you.  Not sure why not.  In the past that method worked for me.  

On 7/20/2020 at 5:24 PM, User 905133 said:

Do you mean just changing how the existing notes are divided on the page?

Maybe the answer to this question was no?

There's a problem with my PC:  The eighth-note triplets do not show in Cakewalk; the do show in SONAR 3.

Edited July 22, 2020 by User 905133

[user 905133]

On 7/20/2020 at 5:13 PM, John Gessner said:

A third of the way through composing this piece when realize the piece is in 4/4 but almost entirely eighth triplets. How do I change change to 6/8 or 12/8 and leave everything alone except take out the triplet signs.

Evidently the file doesn't open in the same way on my PC as on yours.  I just downloaded it again and the only triplets I see are in measure 13 plus they are quarter notes, not 8th notes.  Also there are 8 midi tracks in the version as it opened on my PC, but only 1, 2, and 3 have midi data. As well as being empty, tracks 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are also muted.  

So far as I can see, from start to finish the notes in the 6/8 version I did are the same as the notes in the 4/4 version as they opened up on my PC, though they are in different measures with bar lines in different spaces.

It is a complete mystery to me why I see only quarter-note triplets in measure 13 in the original (tracks, 1, 2, and 3) and not eighth-note triplets anywhere else. 

UPDATE:  I opened the file in SONAR 3.  There are indeed eighth-note triplets in the three tracks. I have no idea why they don't show up as triplets in Cakewalk on my PC.  

FOLLOW-UP: Even after rolling back Cakewalk and re-updating it, my PC doesn't show the eighth-note triplets.

Edited July 22, 2020 by User 905133
to add an update about SONAR 3.

[chris.r]

Here are the steps exactly (but there's no a perfect solution):

1. Ctrl+A to select the whole project

2. Go to menu Process>Length

3. Make sure 'Start Times' and 'Durations' are checked

4. Input 150 Percent and click OK

5. Change tempo to 180

6. Set 'Now Time' at the beginning of bar 3

7. Go to menu Project>Meter/Key Signature

8. Input 'Beats per Measure': 12 and 'Beat Value': 8

9. Make sure that 'At Measure' says 3 and click OK

10. In Staff View go to menu View>Display Resolution and choose 1/8

You should be almost there now, except that the thrills are not behaving properly (common problem for me in Cakewalk). In that case you have two ways to deal with it.

A. Remove thrills and leave just the note

B. Revert to Display Resolution>16, select all notes (ctrl+A) BUT unselect (hold ctrl+right click to drag a lasso over the notes) only the notes that are thrills and passages (basically anything that's not an eight note), then click 'Q' to open quantize window, select Duration 1/8, make sure Start Times and Note Durations are checked, set Strenght to 100% and click OK - now you can manually shape the thrills and passages to match their corresponding note lengths and quantization (from what I see some notes are 16th or 16T) hope that helps

 

yeah I know... there's always some work to be done, no perfect shortcuts

 

[John Gessner]

Close to perfect. Thanks so much. Just a few little twitches.

John