When working with events in a song, it is important to be able to specify an exact location (and duration).  Even a small shift in timing can strongly change the musical effect.

Beat Divisions

We already know that bars are numbered, and these can be further divided into the beats of the time signature.  Beats are then divided into ticks, which define the precise time points where events can be placed.

Songtrix allows you to select the number of tick divisions per quarter note in your song setup.  This is referred to as Ticks Per Qtn (or Tpq).  The Tpq setting for the current song is shown in the status bar.

Tpq values of 144, 192 or 384 are typical, but there are several others available.  Each is a multiple of 6, so the beat can be split cleanly into the duple or triple divisions common in music.

Tick Locations

Using bars, beats and ticks, separated with a dot, we can refer to precise locations in a song in convenient shorthand notation.  Bars and beats are numbered from one (1), ticks from zero (0).  By convention, ticks are padded with leading zeroes to three digits.

Let's see some examples in 4/4 time with a Tpq=144.  The first beat of bar 1 contains locations 1.1.000, 1.1.001, 1.1.002 and so on through to 1.1.143.

The next beat contains locations from 1.2.000 to 1.2.143.  The whole of the first bar goes from 1.1.000 to 1.4.143, and then the second bar starts at 2.1.000.

Durations of events can be measured with a similar notation, using beats and ticks.  So (still with 4/4 time and Tpq=144), a half-beat duration is 0.072, a full beat is 1.000 and two and half beats is 2.072.

You will see locations and durations formed in this way in many areas of Songtrix.