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| Time signature changes during songs | |
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| Topic Started: Jun 2 2012, 03:07 AM (138 Views) | |
| Lasswen | Jun 2 2012, 03:07 AM Post #1 |
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Is there a way to work around time signature changes in the middle of a song? I'm working on a song at the moment that is in 4/4, but for one bar in the chorus (which of course repeats a number of times throughout the song) it changes to 2/4. I had a feeling I remembered reading something about time signature changes a few years back, but couldn't to track anything down. I have tried playing it with ABC Player and it came up with the error that note length had to stay the same throughout a song. In the header it has M:4/4 L:1/8, but where there's the time signature change it has M:2/4 L:1/16. Changing to L:1/8 has the notes playing too long of course, and while I have a couple of other ideas to try I figure I may as well ask if there's a solution since I'm sure others would have come across this before. The song is Summertime Blues, and I've tried looking to see if anyone else had done it before to see how they handled the time signature change, but alas I couldn't find it here or at Fat Lute. I have a couple of other midis with time signature changes, but haven't found LOTRo versions of them, nor can I think of any other songs off the top of my head where I could check. So, any suggestions? |
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| Diamond | Jun 2 2012, 10:21 AM Post #2 |
Diamond Cottonwood
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The note duration error has to do with the absolute measure of the note. This has to do with your meter, not time signature. slow down the song in increments of 4 until the note is long enough to play in game. If you're using LOTRO Midi Player to transpose a midi to ABC then you need to make these changes in the midi while in Anvil Studio. |
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| Lasswen | Jun 2 2012, 02:09 PM Post #3 |
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When you say "slow down the song", do you mean the tempo, what ends up being the Q field in the ABC file? I use Melody Assistant actually. Took a look at Anvil, but am just more familiar with Melody Assistant so have kept on with it for now. I am still working with the midi (well, since I've altered the original midi it now saves as the Melody Assistant default .mus file), but saved it to ABC just to see what happened. The actual error message from LOTRo Player says "The default note length must be the same for all parts of the song". It doesn't say the note is too short/long to play, and when I changed all L fields to 1/8 the notes in the single 2/4 bar of the chorus (quavers/ti-tis/eighth notes) sounded too long compared to the actual song. |
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| Tirigifu | Jun 2 2012, 03:18 PM Post #4 |
Tirigifu "Catfish"
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If you're working from sheet music, sometimes at the point of the time signature change you'll see the symbols that indicate "quarter note equals quarter note" or "quarter note equals eighth note." Does your sheet music have anything like that? If it doesn't, I don't think you'll need to make any change because the absence of that kind of mark usually means absolute note durations stay the same--quarter note in the first time signature still equals quarter note in the second time signature, or eighth still equals eighth. On the other hand, if you know the absolute note durations are supposed to be twice as fast--say, if the first part of the piece has a tempo marking of quarter note = 50 and the second part says quarter note = 100, I think you'd have to tell the Lotro Midi to ABC converter that by keeping the time signature the same in Melody Assistant but making the notes half as long as they appear on the sheet music. So quarters would become eighths, eighths would become sixteenths, etc. Please accept my apologies if you already know the stuff I'm typing about.  Of course, Diamond's technique of just changing the tempo marking in the Melody Assistant or in Anvil might work too. I don't know enough about those programs to say. If all else fails, you can edit the ABC directly if you can find the point in the piece--decrease the numerators of the duration values by half or multiply the denominators by two. Sometimes that can make the piece sound jerky depending on the tempo, which I think is why Diamond mentions working in increments of four.
Edited by Tirigifu, Jun 2 2012, 03:19 PM.
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| Diamond | Jun 2 2012, 07:27 PM Post #5 |
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Diamond Cottonwood
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The LOTRO music system can only read one default note length for an entire song, and LOTRO Midi Player automatically uses quarter note as default... I don't know if you can tell it to use anything else. Tempo and time signature changes within the song are then calculated automatically by LOTROMP according to the default note length, and how the midi plays them, when you export to ABC... so the manual changes Tiri talks about might be confusing (too much math for me!). If you are creating a midi from sheet music, you should use Tiri's suggestion to adjust the notes you enter based on a single default note length. Absolute note duration can be an issue with 16th notes depending on the tempo... if it's a fast tempo a 16th note can be too short to be played in game. It should not be a problem with a moderate to slow tempo. |
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| Lasswen | Jun 3 2012, 10:56 PM Post #6 |
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Well I was a primary/elementary teacher so I do know a bit about numerators and denominators and Maths in general, and what Tirigifu suggested was pretty much some of the ideas I was going to try. I am working from a midi, which when opened in Melody Assistant did have at the start that a quarter note = 160, and I can change the general tempo of the piece, but can't seem to change the tempo elsewhere in the song (this is probably because I'm using an old version, from what I understood from the Help section, though not sure if it would translate to the abc file). I had thought of changing the bars of 2/4 to 4/4 like the rest of the song, but then have been battling in my head if I then fill the rest of the bar with the next part of the song (move it up as such), or if LOTRo would actually play it like it should sound despite the fact the now 4/4 bar was incomplete (since there would be 4 sixteenth notes, so one beat, and not the full complement of 4 beats). It should be able to cope with sixteenth notes as there are some in the song and they play without a problem in the game. On the other hand, I did also try Kept's suggest of running the midi (yes could do it in Melody Assistant, by adding the .mid file extension) through Digero's LotRO Midi Player. It worked! The sounded like it should in game, yay! Although, when I look at the abc file I'm a bit lost without bar lines! Should make adding dynamics more fun  On the plus side it did combine the two parts I had (melody and accompaniment), so I won't have to do that in Melody Assistant.I have midis for a couple of other songs that would be for groups which I've found also have meter/time signature changes, but Summertime Blues is going to end up as another in the series of parody songs I've been doing at Elendilmir open mic. Just need to repeat the verse and chorus 3 more times and tidy up the ending, and check/adjust the rhythm of the melody so it matches the altered lyrics
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| Lasswen | Jun 6 2012, 06:01 AM Post #7 |
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I hadn't altered the transposition, so that wouldn't have been a problem. After Melody Assistant not playing fair with me copying and pasting the extra verses and choruses that I needed (with the 2/4 bars), I ended up putting the whole song into 2/4. Plays in game and sounds right so I'll leave it that way for now. If I get to the other songs I've come across with meter changes I shouldn't need to do that and so shouldn't have that problem. At least I'll have more of an idea of what might/might not work in getting them to play in game. 
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