Metronome on specific point

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

Folks I have a “strange” request. Is it possible to start the metronome beating from a certain point of the track? I explain myself better. I have a track where there is a certain effect at the start, so it doesn’t need to count the beats. After this effect which is long a certain number of beats, I need the metronome start to counting because I have to record the instruments. So, is it possible to adjust it to make it playing the beats by this point? Thank you very much.

#2

This is not possible at present.

#3

@telover: just render a metronome track and position it as you want

#4

You may get what you want by dragging the first meter to the point where you’d like the click to begin.

#5

You could record the metronome to a audio track.

  • Create a track for the recording

Then you need to get the metronome sound to your track:

  • Click on menu: Window / Audio Connections
  • Select “Ardour Misc” from the vertical row of tabs and “Ardour Tracks” on the horizontal row of tabs.
  • Click on the rows “Click Out L and R” on top of the audio track where you want to record to. A green ball appears where you have clicked. This means a connection is made between the items in the vertical and horizontal rows.
  • Record enable your audio track and press “7” on the keyboard to turn the Metronome on. Record about 10 seconds more than you need.

The audio recorded this way always seems to be a bit out of sync of Ardours Bars and beats grid but it is very easy to manually align properly:

  • You need to set the “Snap to Grid” mode to “Off” to be able to move the recorded audio freely in the timeline. Click the “Snap / Grid Mode” item on the Edit - window and select “No Grid” from the drop down menu that appears.
  • Zoom far into the recorded audio and move the waveform of one of the clicks to start exactly at a Bar / Grid.

Now your recorded click is at the correct place in time. If you want to move or copy it then you need to make sure that the start and beginning of the recorded region are exactly at Bar start and end points:

  • Click on “Snap / Grid Mode” item on the Edit - window and select Grid from the drop down menu. Select “Beats” by clicking on the item on the right side of the “Snap / Grid Mode” item.
  • Now move the start and end borders of the recording and they will snap at the closest Bar / Beat. After this you can move / copy the audio to other places in the session and it will stay in sync with Ardours Bars / Beats Grid.
#6

As a further explanation, the first time signature (meter) in the tempo map is special in that it is locked to audio.
By dragging it, you can start the click at any point.
Other time signatures may be locked to ausio as well, allowing you to place click gaps on bar boundaries.
The advantage of doing this over recording the click is that you can change the tempo later.
Admittedly, changing the tempo later will not stretch / shrink audio regions as well, but MIDI and audio regions that are
glued to bars and beats will follow.

#7

Thank you folks for all the answers