Reference Guide

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The Meter/Key View
Notation and Lyrics
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The Meter/Key View
The Meter/Key view lets you enter meter and key changes at measure boundaries. Meter and key
changes affect all tracks.
See:
What Is Meter?
What Is Key?
Opening the Meter/Key View
Adding and Editing Meter/Key Changes
Music Notation for Non-concert-key Instruments
What Is Meter?
The meter—also known as the time signature—describes how to divide time into rhythmic pulses.
When you set the meter, you are specifying the number of beats per measure and the note value of
each beat. Common meters include:
• 2/4 (two beats per measure, quarter note gets a beat)
• 4/4 (four beats per measure, quarter note gets a beat)
• 3/4 (three beats per measure, quarter note gets a beat)
• 6/8 (six beats per measure, eighth note gets a beat)
The top number of a meter is the number of beats per measure, and can be from 1 through 99. The
bottom number of a meter is the value of each beat; you can pick from a list of values ranging from a
whole note to a thirty-second note.
The meter affects several things in SONAR:
• Metronome accents
• How measure, beat, and tick (MBT) times are calculated and displayed
• How the Staff view is drawn
While SONAR in general allows meters to have up to 99 beats per measure, the Staff view cannot
display such measures. You will receive an error message if you try to use the Staff view with meters
exceeding its limit.
Internally, SONAR stores times as “raw” ticks or clock pulses. The timebase—the number of pulses
per quarter note (PPQ)—is adjustable, from 48 to 960 PPQ. If you are using a timebase of 120 PPQ