Originally Posted by PeterGannon
Dave,

Nice tune and performances.

Regarding the tempo and time signature..

Putting aside DAWS and plugins for a minute, and only thinking musically…. (So we won’t be discussing BiaB, or DAWS or plugins). We are talking about the world of music, as has been established and refined for hundreds of years). And the issue under discussion is what is the tempo of your song, in 6/8 time signature,

1. - The tempo of your song is 50 bpm (not 75) . Tap your foot, and I guarantee you (and every other musician) is tapping it at 50. No one will be tapping at 75 ( because that would be the tempo of two of the triplets, which is 2/3 of a beat and that’s not a beat. )

2. - Like other 6/8 tempos, there are three 8th notes per beat ( not two). This is indicated on a leadsheet by the symbol dotted quarter note = 50. The attached graphic demonstrates this, it is piano man (Billy Joel, 6/8 tempo 58 bpm) and you can see the tempo marking is a DOTTED quarter note, which means THREE 8th notes = 1 beat. Not two. The idea of three 8th notes being one beat has been (and remains) an important concept in music for at least 300 years, and they call it a COMPOUND TIME SIGNATURE. (The compound time signatures are 6/8, 9/8, 12/8).

3. So that means the same idea for your song. Each of those triplets is an 8th note, and 3 of them equals a beat, where you tap your foot. And you will be tapping your foot at 50, which is the correct tempo of your song.

So.. are we in agreement so far? (And remember, we are initially not talking about BiaB or DAWS, just talking musically).

If we agree on these points, I am happy to continue the discussion where I’ll explain what’s going wrong in your DAW to introduce the incorrect idea of a tempo of 75.
‘And a reminder, please view the attached Piano Man graphic, that shows the dotted quarter note = 58 graphic, which means that there are triplets, and three triplets is a beat, and the tempo of piano man is 58 bpm . Understanding this is essential to understandings compound time signatures like 6/8.

Hi Peter, yes, I get that and it makes sense.

If BIAB is correct then Toontrack must be wrong. I don't think it's a DAW issue because AFAIK the DAW doesn't care about time signatures other than for display purposes and for passing the information along to the VSTi. And there are two different DAWs in use, I used Reaper to build the drum track with EZDrummer2, and my friend used Cubase to build the piano track with EZKeys.

This stuff is way above my pay grade, but the bottom line is to make it work I needed to use the workflow that I described, and we have done a few songs using the same process.

I would be happy to grab screenshots showing EZDrummer set to 6/8, 75 BPM and BIAB set to 12/8, 50 BPM if that's useful?

Dave

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