Create 7/8 MIDI Groove Clip in a 4/4 project?

[Agincourtdb]

So simply put, I'm trying to create a MIDI groove clip that's 7 eight-notes long, while in a 4/4 project. There *has* to be a way to do this, but even when I have the clip length correct, and the correct area of the timeline selected, etc, on converting the MIDI clip to a MIDI groove clip, it changes it to 8 eighth-notes long. How do I keep it from changing the clip length?

[Colin Nicholls]

Make the groove clip a multiple of quarter notes. Repeat the loop twice within the clip if you have to, or ad a variant to taste. You can totally do it.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Colin Nicholls

[lapasoa]

Simply delete the eight note.

[twelvetone]

56/8 time sig.

You put your 4/4 every 14 beats and your 7/8 every 8 beats

[Agincourtdb]

4 hours ago, lapasoa said:

Simply delete the eight note.

There is no eighth note on the 'and' of four. The clip is 7 eight notes long. 'Groove clip looping' it makes it 8 eighth notes long.

[Agincourtdb]

18 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Make the groove clip a multiple of quarter notes. Repeat the loop twice within the clip if you have to, or ad a variant to taste. You can totally do it.

 

8 minutes ago, twelvetone said:

56/8 time sig.

You put your 4/4 every 14 beats and your 7/8 every 8 beats

I need to know how to create a non-time-signature-length MIDI groove clip. Is that making sense? In other words, these are the kludge workarounds I'm trying to avoid. I should say that I'm used to the MIDI pattern editor in Project 5 (remember her?) and it was so easy. You just dragged the length handle over to how long you wanted the pattern file to be, and then when it was ready you 'exported' it onto the timeline. Still wishing Cakewalk/Sonar had implemented that.

I appreciate the responses!

[twelvetone]

I've never had the pleasure but every now and so often someone here waxes lyrical about Project 5.

Clearly had cool creative ideas in it.

Bakers?

I often do  triplet pop/irish and use 36-based time sigs. Goes into 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12 and 18

Edited March 24, 2021 by twelvetone

[SteveC]

It does look like MIDI groove clips are 1/4 note based.   I created a single 7/8 MIDI clip in a 7/8 time signature, and groove clipping caused the clip length to auto-snap to a quarter note value.   So like Colin said you need to work in 1/4 increments; i.e., in 7/4 instead of 7/8.    Or...  instead of groove clipping use the Duplicate command.  If you do that be sure to disable the Current Snap Settings option under Preferences > Editing. 

 

[Blogospherianman]

Groove clips only go to whole beats.  Since 7/8 is only 3.5 beats (to the groove clip looper) , it gets confused. (It can’t even groove clip loop 7/8 in the meter of 7/8 as it still doesn’t consider the 1/8 note getting 1 beat)

You can as suggested copy the first 7/8 bit to where it goes (the ‘And’ of beat 4), making a total of 7 beats that end on beat 3 of the second  bar.

Bounce those two clips into one clip, then  groove clip loop that. It works perfectly then!

Edited March 26, 2021 by Blogospherianman

[Agincourtdb]

On 3/24/2021 at 6:38 PM, twelvetone said:

I've never had the pleasure but every now and so often someone here waxes lyrical about Project 5.

Clearly had cool creative ideas in it.

Bakers?

I often do  triplet pop/irish and use 36-based time sigs. Goes into 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12 and 18

Yeah for working with MIDI it was fast and intuitive. Lacked serious audio tools. If they'd just upgraded it to x64 I'd be using it still, rewired into Sonar. If I could get it to run on this machine I'm currently on, which I can't, I would write the piece of music in MIDI in P5, save out the MIDI clips (which you can do) and import them into Sonar (which you can do) I may try uninstalling and reinstalling, as I have all the installers on a NAS drive. 

[Agincourtdb]

2 hours ago, Blogospherianman said:

Groove clips only go to whole beats.  Since 7/8 is only 3.5 beats (to the groove clip looper) , it gets confused. (It can’t even groove clip loop 7/8 in the meter of 7/8 as it still doesn’t consider the 1/8 note getting 1 beat)

You can as suggested copy the first 7/8 bit to where it goes (the ‘And’ of beat 4), making a total of 7 beats that end on beat 3 of the second  bar.

Bounce those two clips into one clip, then  groove clip loop that. It works perfectly then!

It's so frustrating that they've built in that limitation. Leaving aside that 7/8 is not 3.5 beats, it's either seven beats, or it's 2+2+3 or 3+2+2 or whatever, there's really no reason for the groove clip creation process to be making decisions about the length of the clip for me. Thanks for responding though, I appreciate it.

[Agincourtdb]

On 3/24/2021 at 8:58 PM, SteveC said:

It does look like MIDI groove clips are 1/4 note based.   I created a single 7/8 MIDI clip in a 7/8 time signature, and groove clipping caused the clip length to auto-snap to a quarter note value.   So like Colin said you need to work in 1/4 increments; i.e., in 7/4 instead of 7/8.    Or...  instead of groove clipping use the Duplicate command.  If you do that be sure to disable the Current Snap Settings option under Preferences > Editing. 

h

This raises an interesting possibility... just using 7/4 at a ludicrously fast tempo. I'm a little hesitant since I'm going to be driving outboard hardware synths, and I'm new to that, and I'm not sure how their tempo functions will respond...

Thanks for responding

[Byron Dickens]

They won't care.

[RobertWS]

1 hour ago, bdickens said:

They won't care.

Because they are machines!

[msmcleod]

I rarely use groove clips myself, but I do use 7/8 a lot and in some cases change time signatures every few bars or so.

This is what I would do:

1. Do what @Colin Nicholls suggested - make it twice the length so it's aligned to 1/4 notes, then slip edit the clip back to 3.5 beats long
2. Change the time signature for that bar to 7/8, setting the time signature back to 4/4 on the next bar. This will mean everything is properly measure aligned.

 

[bvideo]

I wish it were more clear to me what the role of this 7/8 loop is in this 4/4 project.

[Agincourtdb]

On 3/26/2021 at 2:53 PM, bvideo said:

I wish it were more clear to me what the role of this 7/8 loop is in this 4/4 project.

...polymeter? 

[David Baay]

I'm also curious about the need for a 7/8 groove-clip in a 4/4 project. In any case, I would just blow off the groove-clip feature  entirely, make a regular MIDI clip that's 7/8 long, and copy-paste as needed with snap at an 8th or with landmarks enabled to snap to clip boundaries.

[msmcleod]

8 hours ago, David Baay said:

I'm also curious about the need for a 7/8 groove-clip in a 4/4 project. In any case, I would just blow off the groove-clip feature  entirely, make a regular MIDI clip that's 7/8 long, and copy-paste as needed with snap at an 8th or with landmarks enabled to snap to clip boundaries.

^^^ This is the best method IMO.

Use Bounce to clip(s) on the groove clip to make it a regular clip, then slip edit back an 1/8th note.

Once it's a regular clip, you can use duplicate clips ( CTRL + D ) to make extra copies of the clip.

[Agincourtdb]

On 5/12/2021 at 5:10 AM, msmcleod said:

^^^ This is the best method IMO.

Use Bounce to clip(s) on the groove clip to make it a regular clip, then slip edit back an 1/8th note.

Once it's a regular clip, you can use duplicate clips ( CTRL + D ) to make extra copies of the clip.

Yeah. Thanks for the help guys. I guess I'm doing this the hard way ?