5. Clips and structure

Rhythm cells and tuplets

The Score works out how to write a rhythm from when the notes start and end. Most of the time that’s all it needs. When a beat should read as five notes, a sextuplet rather than two triplets, or straight eighths that it might take for a triplet, you tell it with a rhythm cell: how a beat (or two, or half of one) of a clip is divided.

Rhythm cells and tuplets

Available on every platform.

A rhythm cell is notation only: playback never reads it, so setting one doesn’t change what you hear. It belongs to the clip, so it repeats, links and copies with it.

Set a beat’s rhythm

1. Show the Rhythm row in an Editor pane, with Song Rows (Song rows). It shows the cells of the track you’re working in, each a box over the beats it covers, labelled with its division: “3”, “5”, “straight”.
2. Click the row over a beat of a clip for its menu, and choose:

• Automatic: no cell; the Score decides (as at first).
• Triplets: three eighths in the beat.
• 16th Triplets: three sixteenths in each half of the beat.
• Sextuplet: six sixteenths in the beat, as one group.
• Quintuplet and Septuplet: five or seven sixteenths in the beat.
• Quarter Triplets (Two Beats): three quarter notes across two beats.
• Straight Eighths and Straight Sixteenths: no tuplet here, even if the notes are played loosely, for example in a song that swings elsewhere.

The one in force is checked. A new cell replaces any it overlaps, and each choice is one undo step.

Quantize Notes to the Rhythm

A cell says how the beat is written; the notes may still be played a little early or late. Quantize Notes to the Rhythm, in the same menu over a beat with a cell, moves the notes that start in it onto its parts (the nearest), and their ends with them. Unlike the cell, this changes what plays, so it happens only when you choose it.

Writing tuplets as you go

In the Score’s note input, Fives, sixes, sevens (a rhythm cell) (⌥5–⌥7Alt+5–Alt+7Alt+5–Alt+7 (⌥5–⌥7 on a Mac)) writes fives, sixes or sevens, and each group sets its cell as it’s written. Triplets (T) writes triplets. See Note input.

From files

Guitar Pro files’ tuplets come in as rhythm cells, and Guitar Pro export writes them back (Guitar Pro files).

For notes you played in rather than wrote, Score Setup’s Played Rhythm sets how tidily the Score reads them (Score Setup).