choice of notating "swing" 1/8th notes

Hello - i have recorded into a few different tracks and some display the score as triplet 1/8ths grouped and separated properly (mathematically correct) ut others display these notes as dotted 1/8ths followed by 1/16ths (commonly done) BUT I can't have both

approaches in the same arrangement/score when I print it or confusion will surely set in -

Is there a way (of course there is is!) to control/adjust this?

THANKS!

Yes!

 

First, you need to know an important concept... The appearance of the score is adjustable per region. By isolating an area of your part by cutting it with the scissor tool and creating a separate region, you can apply different Quantize, Interpretation, and other score-specific settings to it. For example...

 

Let's say you have one giant region for your entire part, but in measure 15 you need to display dot 8 & 16ths instead of trips. Isolate that area by cutting the region with the scissor tool (can even be done in the score editor). Then, making sure that region is selected, change the various parameters until you get what you want.

 

See if that works for you.

Okay thx - it is absolutely the "by the region" concept - could be very helpful if you need it like you said - so I need to go through and select each region and make sure note values are the same I guess will try this in a minute THX

You can still fix the problem in the way I described for individual measures or even parts of measures. Other times, selecting a different score editor Quantize value will fix the problem for the entire region. You have to experiment to find out what value will give you the maximum number of correct-looking notes, and then deal any that don't look right in various ways, including the approach I mentioned.

 

There's another approach, and that is to duplicate your regions and prepare your score from those. These would be 'score only' regions, assigned to non-sounding instruments. You can then hard-quantize the notes or otherwise adjust their position so that they look right on the score, all without affecting the parts used for playback. This is a very common approach to dealing with this, BTW.

Hey Ski,

Your input, as always, is excellent. I've sort of fought this 'visual quantize' idea for a while.

 

When printing parts, however, I like to have one long region so I can click and print. This sometimes leaves me with problem areas especially dealing with 16ths and triplets of any sort. For swing pieces, I sometimes quantized the midi (not the score) by one of the swing settings (like 8c) and that helps, then use the 8/12 setting in the score.. but do you have any suggestions for a piece that has both straight and swung parts other than chopping them up and then opening them as a display of multiple regions.

 

DanRad

Thanks Dan!

 

When printing parts, however, I like to have one long region so I can click and print.

 

Taking a contiguous part and chopping it up into regions so as to apply different score editor quantize values to them takes a bit of getting used to looking at in the arrange page, for sure, but I'd like to suggest that when it comes to score prep, it's the fastest method for dealing with areas of a score which require different appearances (swung vs. not swung. More on this shortly). But it's also useful for this kind of scenario with straight rhythms...

 

Let's say you have a part that's mostly 16ths, where setting the score editor quantize to 16 makes quick work of preparing that part. But then, say, you have one measure where you have 32nds. So, isolate that one section and set the score editor quantize to 32nds. Now you have three regions: one set to 16, a small one set to 32, and the last one set to 16. Even though it looks discontiguous in the arrange page, it will print out perfectly fine.

 

do you have any suggestions for a piece that has both straight and swung parts other than chopping them up and then opening them as a display of multiple regions.

 

Indeed! One method is to display everything as straight rhythms and then apply the -n- triplet tool to selected groups of notes to force them to appear as triplets.

 

I'll post some examples of these later tonight so that you can see the dealy-o.

 

Cheers,

 

Ski

It's pretty late right now, and while I can vouch for the accuracy of the information below it might not be exactly what the OP is looking for. Maybe it's more along the lines of what Dan and I were discussing. I dunno. Anyway... below is an example of how Logic notates mixed rhythms, including triplets, swung, and straight playing with the score editor's display quantize set to 16/24.

 

In this first screenshot you see a quirky little piano thing which I played in. The region itself is not quantized, and I made no corrections to the position of the notes after they were played in. All in all, pretty impressive notation, though it could use a little cleaning up to minimize rests and accidentals. Be that as it may...

 

Measures 6 and 7 were played swung, but the rhythms appear straight. But then... in measure 8, I intentionally played the first two beats as triplets, and the remaining dot-eigth + sixteenths were played straight.

 

What did Logic get right on the money? Everything except the swing! But if you were to indicate "swing" or put the appropriate indication at the head of the tune (quarter note = quarter + eighth triplet) you'd be good to go with this one.

 

 

As it turns out, it wouldn't matter if I played in the dot eighth + sixteenth notes in mm 8 and 9 as swung or straight because Logic is going to display the notes with straight rhythms (quantize set to 16/24). But let's say that we wanted to indicate the dot eighth + sixteenths in mm 8 and 9 as actual triplets. Here you can use the -n- tuplet tool. Here I selected the notes on the 3rd beat of measure 8 and dragged the -n- symbol over them. After checking the settings of the triplet dialog, voila, it now appears as a triplet. (Scroll the picture to see the triplet dialog box, or click on the picture to see the whole thing at once).

 

 

Unfortunately, adding that triplet messed up the true triplet on beat 2 (see above). To rectify that, I had to apply the -n- tuplet tool to those notes to make them look right again. And wouldn't you know it, correcting those notes then messed up the triplet on beat 1! So that's Logic life for ya, but after correcting beat 1, here's the result:

 

Hey Ski,

Nice work. You've got me wondering about the box that says "Double Value" ... are they referring to some sort of shopping discount? But what does that mean? Here's another challenge for you. When I try and tie something INTO a triplet... let's say I have a quarter note on beat one and then a triplet on beat two, but beat one is tied to the first triplet. Similarly, another thing I really have a hard time with is when I have a "turn" situation. Like an eighth that I want to be then followed by a 1/16 triplet. (Much like a "turn") I like to have them beamed together, but I have a hard time making that happen. Sometimes I'll succeed and then copy that somewhere else, only to have it show up in some other notation form. What am I doing wrong...am I notationally challenged?

Hi Dan,

 

Thanks! Yeah, double value, half value, triplets (in general), and (especially) getting notes to tie into a triplet --- all tricky stuff. There's an old thread somewhere on LPH about tying notes into triplets, but I can't seem to find it. But yeah, sometimes these things seem to work (or, in the case of tied notes, are totally do-able) and sometimes they don't. Been dealing with exactly that all week.

 

Man, I wish I had time to get into this right now (cuz the score editor is a favorite subject of mine) but I'm on a serious deadline. fPerhaps Doug Z. or Jay Asher other score-editor-ninjas can chime in on the wiley ways of getting your twicky twipwit twacks to twanswate.