This is our last post in time signature change automation. We’ll be using Session view but if you’re looking for the one on Arrangement View, check out our last post. There are a few ways to do this in Session view so stick around, hopefully you can find one that works for you. Let’s go!

Doubling the Tempo

More often than not, you’ll probably need a time signature change because you’ve got a section or 2 that loses half a bar. In cases like these, the easiest way to get around being out of sync with Ableton would be to double the tempo. The double time compensates for the half bar by making it a full bar because everything doubles. Simple!

Using Scenes

The next method is to break up your song section into scenes (check out this post for formatting your songs in this way). By breaking your song into its respective sections, you can assign the time signature (and tempo) to each individual scene so you can have an Intro and Verse be 2 different time signatures without much work. The only issue is that this assumes that the tempo changes don’t happen in the middle of a song section.

Notice how in the video at bar 11 when the song went from the Intro to the Verse the time signature changed from 3/4 to 4/4.

Using Dummy Scenes

In the case where you do have a time signature change mid song section or prefer having your song on just one scene, there is another option. The idea is fairly simple, there’s a blank scene that is automatically triggered during playback which will update the global time signature without affecting playback. We would break it down for you now, but we’ve decided to dedicate an entire blog post to this topic. You can check it out here.

Closing Thoughts

We hope this has been helpful and be sure to check back next time for more info on dummy scenes. Also, any issues please drop us a line at hello@renderthemusic.com.

Thanks for reading!