For those who work with external MIDI clock sources I have logged this in Mantis as 4272… feel free to add to this concept.
In current versions of Ardour (last checked 2 weeks ago…so please close if this is now available)… When synced to external MIDI clock the editor window retains tempo and meter information entered in or left as default… e.g. 120 bpm 4/4 timing.
For good readability when synchronising to external sequencers it would be much better if the tempo was able to adjust according to the MIDI clock input, as such measure lines in the editor and bar:beat information would match the external sequencer (soft or hardware based)… Ideally it would also derive the meter, but if this is not possible simply deriving the tempo from the manually entered in meter…
Presently I need to enter in the tempo manually which can be tedious when working on a song as I often change my mind…
MIDI Clock provides no meter information. The sender & receiver either have to make an assumption about the meter or exchange the information via some other mechanism.
Thanks Paul… then it would still be a major improvement if it just interpreted the tempo based on the user input meter combined with the MIDI clock signal…(on further reference I noticed this is how other MIDI sequencers do it…)…
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This is actually quite logical as when composing it is quite common to play around with the tempo, but decisions on meter are usually less fluid… (i.e. if the meter starts in 4/4 and then changes to 3/4 at some point it is unlikely that will change often… )… So it’s easy to ensure that both sequencer apps are aligned… It is also very useful if one wants to have some phrasing in 3/4 on one sequencer that overlaps a 4/4 sequence (effectively 12/8… think minimalist composition)…
definitely not !!! … but then someone writing prog rock and syncing with external sequencers (although I can’t see this happening too often)… would benefit from this change too…
I had a suspicion that meter information wasn’t given, but getting the display to interpret the tempo would be excellent… the main aim is so that if I have the same meter set on both sequencers that when the external sequencer reaches bar aa:bb:ccc that ardour is at exactly the same point… It doesn’t specifcally have to display the tempo (many sequencers grey this out when externally synced) but aligning bars:beats:ticks is the critical part…
which of course brings me to tick resolution (PPQ) … is this configurable?
