Plug-in for Changing Notes to follow "Beat 3 Rule"

New post

PETER WILDE Posted November 12, 2020 14:10

Hello. I have a set of .XML files I've been given from a colleague to notate, edit, etc. This person doesn't have much music theory background, and will often input a sequence of notes in a measure in away that breaks the "Beat 3 Rule" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pELdNcWmDB8).. An example is an eighth note, three quarter notes, and a eighth note. I'm from the school where charts should always show the third beat (of a bar of 4/4). In the example, beat three is lost in the sequence of quarter notes. To change this, I would replace the second quarter note with two eighths with the first being tied to the second. I've got a lot of charts to fix, and I would like to know if there is a tool or plug-in that could do this for me on all the measures in a composition at once. Thanks.

4 comments

Date Votes

PETER THOMSEN Posted November 12, 2020 14:22

There is

MIDI/Audio menu > Retranscribe

Have you tried that?

NB:

You must use the Selection Tool to select some music.

If nothing is selected, the command Retranscribe will be greyed out.

Jeffrey Turner Posted November 12, 2020 14:36

IMO, the beat 3 rule does have some exceptions. In pop charts and especially latin music, if this rhythmic motif occurs throughout a chart many times, it's okay to leave it as is.

Don't get me wrong, in most instances it's better to have beat 3 visible, but don't be afraid to break the rule if it makes sense.

MIKE HALLORAN Posted November 12, 2020 16:28

I’m with Jeffrey. Strict adherence makes some charts unnecessarily cluttered, Many forms of pop music do not follow it.

PETER WILDE Posted November 12, 2020 16:54

Peter Thomsen, thanks for the Re-transcribe tip.

Agreed about strict adherence. For instance, the 3-side of clave in non-Cuban made charts is often presented as two dotted quarters followed by a quarter, which makes sense to me. It think more strict adherence should be for shorter length notes like dotted eighths.

Please sign in to leave a comment.