With Music Timelines, you can position presets on a timeline according to bars and beats in musical time. Music Timelines also enable other tools for programming to music, such as automatic tempo detection and simulation metronome.
Music Timelines are available in Designer 2.12 and later.
Enable Music Tools
From the Timeline tab in Designer 2, click “Manage…” and check the box labelled “Music”.
Once enabled, the timeline header changes to show musical time in bars and beats. Bars are shown with strong lines, with beats and subdivisions of the beat shown with lighter lines at higher zoom levels.
Simulation Audio is automatically enabled on Music Timelines.
Note: Music tools are not available on timelines with real time or audio time source.
Configure Tempo and Time Signature
Once music tools have been enabled on a timeline, options for “Tempo” and “Time Signature” appear below the “Music” checkbox in the timeline properties popover.
The “Tempo” option allows you to specify a BPM (beats per minute) value for the timeline. This adjusts the amount of time between bars and beats in the timeline header. Tempo can be detected automatically using Get Tempo.
The “Time Signature” option allows you to configure how beats and bars are counted. Selecting “None” will ignore bars and present a timeline header delineated only by beats.
Get Tempo with Automatic Tempo Detection
To use automatic tempo detection, first add audio to your timeline. You can do this by selecting a file from the Media tab and placing it on a controller audio or simulation audio lane.
To activate automatic tempo detection, right-click on an audio preset and select “Get Tempo”. Designer will analyse your audio and present a tempo, which you can choose whether to apply to your timeline.
💡 Tip: Sometimes Designer detects a tempo which is exactly half or double the correct tempo. If something doesn’t feel quite right, try halving or doubling the tempo.
Note: Automatic tempo detection is currently limited to files with 44.1kHz sample rate
Program to Music
When adjusting presets on a timeline with music tools enabled, the cursor will snap to musical divisions. The timeline playhead will also show a tooltip displaying both internal time and musical time in the notation bars | beats . percentage of beat.
💡 Tip: Snapping resolution varies depending on zoom level. Zoom in to snap to smaller musical divisions.
To manually specify the Start, End, Length, Fade and Release times of a preset in musical time, enter a musical time into the preset’s properties. Musical time is expressed in the notation bars | beats . percentage of beat.
💡 Tip: If you would rather not use the pipe (|) character, it can be replaced with a full stop (.) in the format bars . beats . percentage of beat.
💡 Tip: There is no need to specify a full musical time. For example, typing just “3” will be accepted as 3 bars.
Note: Musical time starts at bar 1 beat 1. Entering time 0 will default to 1 | 1.00 on a Music Timeline.
Using Simulation Metronome
To hear a metronome click while simulating playback, click the metronome icon in the timeline toolbar. You will hear a different tone on the first beat of every bar.
Note: Simulation metronome is not included in the project file and will not be audible on controller output.
