# Help ! : Dotted Quarter = 64 in Logic Pro X



## GingerMaestro (Apr 22, 2019)

Hi I'm woking on a piece that goes from Quarter = 130 to Dotted Quarter = 64 in the next measure/bar. I have spent two hours on the internet trying to find out how to get the correct tempo, barring and click in the metronome (Dotted Quarters) and this is completly defeating me. Can anyone help ? If you have done this in Logic, I', sure you will know exactly what I'm talking about. Very Frustrating ! Thank you in anticipation. Ginger


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## mikeh-375 (Apr 22, 2019)

Whatever your first signature is at 130 then change the time signature to 3/8 with a tempo of c.102 . The click will tap out quavers, but the tempo of the full 3/8 bar, ie a dotted crotchet, is 64. You can tell the click to just beat out the first beat of each 3/8 measure in the metronome settings by unchecking the 'beat' box....any good?


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## jbuhler (Apr 22, 2019)

Set the time signature. Go to metronome settings (control click the metronome to access). Deselect "beat." From everything I've read it does seem you have to compute the tempo of compound meters by hand. 64*3/2=96.


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## mikeh-375 (Apr 22, 2019)

oh yeah @jbuhler...I'm crap at math, apart from that though the methods sound...


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## Saxer (Apr 22, 2019)

If you don't want to calculate or just don't trust your own calculation (like me): 
Bounce one bar of tempo 1 to audio. Drag that bar of audio into the next part, set the locators to one bar and use the function "Adjust tempo by region length".


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## GingerMaestro (Apr 22, 2019)

Thank you, it just seems weird that there isn't a "proper" way of doing this, 6/8 is a pretty standard time signature ! I guess another way would be to keep it in 2/4 time and make everything eighth note triplets..


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## jbuhler (Apr 22, 2019)

GingerMaestro said:


> Thank you, it just seems weird that there isn't a "proper" way of doing this, 6/8 is a pretty standard time signature ! I guess another way would be to keep it in 2/4 time and make everything eighth note triplets..


I agree it's weird. I mean if there is one thing computers are undeniably good at, it should be things like transparently doing tempo and meter calculations! 

Didn't Logic used to have a grid that showed n-tuplets as well (so you could set out the grid in divisions of five or seven rather than just twos and threes as now)? I'm working on a piece now that has lots of quintuplets and it's been rather a pain.


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## thesteelydane (Apr 23, 2019)

GingerMaestro said:


> Thank you, it just seems weird that there isn't a "proper" way of doing this, 6/8 is a pretty standard time signature ! I guess another way would be to keep it in 2/4 time and make everything eighth note triplets..



It's silly yes, but it's because of the MIDI standard. MIDI can only understand tempo in quarter notes - it's from the "olden" days when MIDI was primarily a protocol for sending musical information between hardware units. It would be no good if one synth was clocked to a quarter note value and another to a dotted value for example - so the creators of MIDI got around this potential nightmare by just deciding that all tempo information was always in reference to quarter notes. It kept everything in sync. And all modern DAWs are at their heart still just MIDI sequencers, so they have no choice but to stick to the MIDI protocol.

With todays tech all this is of course no longer necessary, so I would imagine this is one of the things they are looking at when creating the new MIDI 2.0 protocol.


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## Dom (Apr 23, 2019)

Logic's score editor has a "dotted quarter =" symbol, so I sometimes just add that anywhere, to check.


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## GingerMaestro (Apr 24, 2019)

Thanks @Dom, yes I saw that on my search somewhere, I however can’t seem to find how you I put this ? Is there a quick shortcut somewhere ?


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## Dom (Apr 24, 2019)

See part box on the left. Drag it onto the score page.


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## ag75 (May 22, 2021)

Dom said:


> See part box on the left. Drag it onto the score page.


This was posted a while ago, but thank you Dom for this helpful tip! I was just looking to do this very thing. Much appreciated.


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