Automatic Time Signature Detection
Does anyone know of any software that is able to recognize the time signature of a song, eg. 3/4 vs. 4/4
I am used to doing this by ear; but coupled with key detection and bpm detection this would be a huge advantage when creating playlists on the fly.
I’m afraid I have no idea, but I am curious what genre you play.
I typicaly mix with glitch hop and trap, my favorite being 128 bpm downtempo trap. For personal pleasure house or trance depending on my mood.
The song that led me to post this is “one republic - counting stars”. Ive never had an appreciation for this band but this song is pretty catchy and ripe for the mixing. The time signature is really f’d up though, 3/4 or 6/8 most likley.
It would mix great into a trap song however, it would probably take me hours just to come up with a few trap songs in 3/4.
are you referring to to bar signatures? Counting Stars by One Republic is straight 4/4 at 121 bpm. Mix this tune into house sets all the time. There is a pause in between bars at some points, but this can easily be handled by stopping the track your mixing it with or using keypoints. If you have an acapella for remixing, simply align it with the original tune in multitrack (using audition or something simlar) and knock out the pauses.
That makes perfect sense actually. I wanted to throw a 32 bar loop on the vocals and it didnt sound right. I moved past it assuming it was a non standard time signature, which is usually the case in that situation. It’s a new track in my collection, so I would hope that I would’ve figured it out myself. But I cant say that I have seen that in a song before.
Just to clarify its like a two bar pause right?
you can count 6/8 in as 1,2. Separating 3 8th notes per count.
that’s like Music theory 101
I play a bit of everything…wedding DJ, and I DJ for professional dance competitions (think “Dancing With The Stars” level Pros). So, I actually play 3/4 time music for Waltz. I take all the songs I already know to be Waltz, and put them into a separate folder and analyze them as a block. That let’s me at least control the overall tempo window, and limit any “2x” issues in the automatic tempo detection.
As far as I know, there is no easy way to “automatically” detect the time signature of a given song. Also AFAIK, in Traktor the GLOBAL time signature seems to be hard coded to assume 4/4 time, and a “generated” or “perfect” tempo through the whole song.
If there is a way to have Traktor “recognize” songs as other than 4/4 time, that would be awesome. I am even willing to tag those songs “by hand” (all my 3/4 time is in it’s own folder).
You seem to have missed the topic of this thread no rex4u, I do appreciate the free lesson though.
Your certainly correct about about traktor being hard coded for 4/4 time. Anything that isn’t 4/4 is a bit of an exception in my collection.
I have a lot respect for anyone mixing outside of the EDM/pop(digitally produced) genres. At the very least it takes someone with a good ear, but to to make it sound good well rounded skill and knowledge is necessary. So props to you soundinmotion!
It sounds like you would have a lot to gain from key signature detection, though I have yet to find any leads elsewhere on the internet.
Ill post back here if I do happen to come across anything.
To be fair, I rarely mix 3/4 time. Most of my mixing would be with Top 40, Classic Rock, or similar genres…and simple beatmatching at that.
I use Mixed In Key, and it helps quite a bit. I find the automatic bpm detection to be slightly better then Traktor for songs with live drummers.
In traktor you can set the grid points where the time signatures vary. For anything 3/4, you can quickly loop that third bar to make 4 bars per measure for mixing. It’s an old trick from turntablism to create more danceable breaks out of jazz beats. Think about squarepusher tunes as well. It would be kind of kool to see a time signature tab in traktor or any dj software with it being labeled automatically during analyzing.