Time signatures and grid resolution

Each section has its own time signature, so a song that drops a bar of 2/4 or switches to 6/8 for the bridge is written the way it's played.

Choosing a time signature

The menu on each row lists the common ones:

Other… at the bottom takes anything else: type it as top/bottom, with 2, 4, 8 or 16 on the bottom. Changing a section's time signature keeps the hits that still fit.

How beats are grouped

In x/4 and x/2 every beat is its own group. In x/8 and x/16 the grid groups the pulses the way they're felt, and the notation beams them the same way:

• 6/8, 9/8, 12/8: groups of three.
• 5/8: 3 + 2. 7/8: 2 + 2 + 3.
• Other odd meters are broken into twos and threes.

Resolution

The menu on the grid's toolbar sets how many cells there are per beat. The choices depend on the bottom number of the time signature:

Switching resolution keeps every hit where it falls in time. Going finer adds empty cells between your hits. Going coarser drops any hit that no longer lands on a cell, so switch back with Ctrl+Z if something disappears.

Use the coarsest resolution that fits the groove. An eighth-note groove in a 16th grid works, but it's twice as many cells to read past.

Triplets and shuffles

For a shuffle or a 12/8 feel in 4/4 you have two options. Triplets gives three cells per beat, written with triplet brackets in the notation. Or keep the grid in 8ths and turn up Swing in the header, which delays every off-beat for a triplet feel on playback while the chart stays in plain eighths. Swing is covered in Tempo, dynamics and swing.