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marking first beat in the bar on a drum track

Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2020 12:02 pm
by valiant
I'm using a keyboard-created drum track as a metronome during all my guitar recordings, currently displayed (like the guitar and other tracks) as blue on a black background. Is there any way to mark visibly the first beat in every bar, like changing the colour of that particular beat, or putting an overlay with a coloured line at the relevant positions?

(If I just use a marker, I get so many which distract from the "essential ones" like verse1, verse2, chorus!!!)

The reason I ask is this. If I know from the sheet music that, for example, an extra instrument comes in at bar 46, say, it's easier to count up in bars with two beats left over, rather than having to count all the way along to 46.

Re: marking first beat in the bar on a drum track

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2020 7:02 am
by rsrockinron
Not sure I understand the question. Are you recording the drums as audio? What I usually do is start do is start with a click track as a metronome. Once you have a click track going up in the right hand corner of MTS you can switch the timer over to bars and beats and that would let you know where you are in the song. The only way you can switch it is if you have at least one midi track in the song which the click track is

Re: marking first beat in the bar on a drum track

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2020 12:27 pm
by valiant
Yes, I'm using the drums as audio which I use to keep my tempo right and then, add into the final mix if it's a drum-type song. I find it more versatile than the click track. But I've solved the problem anyway now.
I copy a few bars of my drum track onto a second track and on this second track, delete all the spikes except for the first one of each bar. I copy this back onto the end of the second track, and keep repeating until I have a whole track of spikes marking the start of each bar for the length of the projected song. If during the course of recording, I need to find a particular bar, this track is easier to use (counting with, say, a pencil point on the screen) than using the original drum track.
I know having an extra "bars" track takes away screen space for the instruments but unless/until I actually need to use it, I can keep this "bars" track minimised.