Change Meter in Pro Tools

 

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Overview of how to Change Meter in Pro Tools

Have you ever been in a situation in which you are producing a song or a score for an orchestra and you need to printout paper copies of the score?

When this is the case, you need to be extremely specific with all the music theory involved and make sure the score is on point, specially when dealing with symphonies.

It often happens that we have a meter change, and we simply don’t type the meter change, we just play it because we know the song.

But when you are sharing your production with musicians that will be “reading” it, you must make the meter change explicit.

Pro Tools gives us the opportunity to Change Meter anywhere within the timeline in order to keep consistency between the music and the written score.

Let’s see how it works!

 

 

1. Open or create a new Pro Tools session:

 

 

By default, Pro Tools sets the Meter to a 4/4 time signature at the start of the timeline, because it assumes you will be producing music on that scheme.

 

 

You can change this at any time within the timeline to create a meter change.

This is specially common in progressive music or orchestral based productions.

 

Let’s assume you want to change the meter starting on bar 3.

 

2. Locate your playback at the start of bar 3 (first beat of bar 3):

 

 

3. From the top menu bar click on: Event -> Time Operations -> Change Meter:

 

 

The Time Operations window will open at the Change Meter function as:

 

 

Here we can tell Pro Tools, every single parameter of the Change Meter function such as:

• New Meter: This field lets you type the new meter
• Click: This parameter lets you configure the click resolution
• Starting Bar: This field lets you set the starting location of the meter change.
• Apply Change: This drop-down list lets you set the duration of the meter change.
• Realign: This area lets us select the aspects that will be realigned after the new meter change.

 

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will set the new meter to 3/4, with a quarter note click. The settings will be:

• New Meter: 3/4.
• Click: Quarter note.
• Starting Bar: 3.
• Apply Change: to session end.
• Realign: Meter ruler only.

 

4. Set the previous parameters:

 

5. Press “Apply”.

 

The meter change will be applied as:

 

 

It is easy to see how the meter changes from 4/4 to 3/4 and stays like that only the end of the session.

And that is it!

At this point, we have successfully explained an overview of how to Change Meter in Pro Tools.

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