BBT Markers (Bar markers)

BBT Markers, or “Bar Markers” provide the ability to elegantly define a grid for editing or sequencing, even in challenging real-world situations like having multiple songs on a timeline.

Right-click in the Bars:Beats ruler to create a BBT marker.

• Drop a BBT marker ‘anywhere’ on the timeline to define a Bar-Beat position (like 1|1|0).
• You aren’t limited to setting the 1. If you don’t want to tempo-map a whole song, you can define a specific time (like: “bar 49, the start of the breakdown”) where you want to define a grid, but you don’t care about the prior times.
• You can even introduce multiple “1|1|0” times, if you have multiple songs on your timeline (!!!)
• BBT markers also include their own tempo and meter information, so you can define a new tempo starting on the BBT marker.
• You can move BBT markers after creating them, if you need to land it ‘exactly’ on the beat.
• Tempo-changes to the ‘left’ of a BBT marker will not propagate through the BBT marker. This allows you to make changes to the tempo of a prior song or section, without ruining the tempo of the new section.
• BBT markers introduce a subtle new paradigm: you can now record a band (either live, or in-studio) and then quickly and elegantly assign a grid to any part of the performance, for ease in editing, arranging, clip-launching, or midi accompaniment. Extended intros, false starts, and short segments (“let’s just play the chorus again”) can be accommodated.

Why is this important?

In traditional, linear recording (to analog or digital tape) it was always the case that you could record multiple takes (or songs) in a single session. And your ‘mixer’ settings would largely apply to all the takes that were recorded in the session.

Despite all the advances in digital editing and arranging, other DAWs do not handle this situation well. Most DAWs allow you to create scenes or snapshots or alternate views, or even allow you to open multiple sessions at once. But those are all poor workarounds for what we really want: multiple songs on a timeline, each with their own timecode position, tempo, and editing grid. Or not! The beauty of BBT markers is that you can assign a tempo/grid where you need it, and ignore it when you don’t!

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