4/4 turned into 3/4. Why is it slower?

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Ukho
Posts: 68
Joined: 30 Jun 2021

04 Sep 2021

Hello everyone! :)

I have a question:

I changed my 4/4 song into a 3/4 song.
But now I have to speed up the bpm of the 3/4 song to adjust it to the original tempo of the 4/4 song , because it is somehow slower than it was as the 4/4 song before.
Sure, I can speed it up to my liking, but is there a specific reason for the song being slower?

I hope I my words make sense?

Thanks for your help!
"Music is a place to take refuge. It's a sanctuary from mediocrity and boredom. It's innocent and it's a place you can lose yourself in thoughts, memories and intricacies."

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TritoneAddiction
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04 Sep 2021

Strange. This doesn't happen on my end, when I try it.

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guitfnky
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04 Sep 2021

is the song actually playing faster or are you just having to squeeze more stuff into a shorter time span because you’ve effectively reduced the length of each bar by ¼?

if you have chord changes that happen every bar for example, you’re going to have one less beat each bar/chord, so your melody/rhythm has to be adjusted also.
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Ukho
Posts: 68
Joined: 30 Jun 2021

04 Sep 2021

The song, at first, was running at 120 bpm, being a 4/4, but after I turned it into 3/4 I had to go up to 170 bpm to kinda sound like 100 bpm.
I did adjust everything, because it is also shorter now, but the song itself runs perfectly fine.

I was just wondering if there is a musical term for it?
"Music is a place to take refuge. It's a sanctuary from mediocrity and boredom. It's innocent and it's a place you can lose yourself in thoughts, memories and intricacies."

Bes
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04 Sep 2021

time signatures are just different ways of dividing the tempo. can you show us where in reason you changed the time signature?
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Ukho
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Joined: 30 Jun 2021

04 Sep 2021

time signature.jpg
time signature.jpg (478.78 KiB) Viewed 803 times
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Ahornberg
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05 Sep 2021

Would be nice to have some audio to listen to ...

Bes
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05 Sep 2021

and the sync mode is internal as well, seems unexpected to me but i'm no sequencer expert
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Ukho
Posts: 68
Joined: 30 Jun 2021

05 Sep 2021

"Music is a place to take refuge. It's a sanctuary from mediocrity and boredom. It's innocent and it's a place you can lose yourself in thoughts, memories and intricacies."

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selig
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Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: The NorthWoods, CT, USA

05 Sep 2021

Ukho wrote:
04 Sep 2021
The song, at first, was running at 120 bpm, being a 4/4, but after I turned it into 3/4 I had to go up to 170 bpm to kinda sound like 100 bpm.
I did adjust everything, because it is also shorter now, but the song itself runs perfectly fine.

I was just wondering if there is a musical term for it?
Wait - after changing to 3/4: how is the song playing slower, but is also shorter, but also the song itself runs perfectly fine?
I listened to the song which is in 4/4 (could be counted as 12/8 too), so why change it in the first place?
Starting by describing what you are trying to accomplish, THEN tellingus how you approached the issue may help us help you better. :)
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guitfnky
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05 Sep 2021

Ukho wrote:
04 Sep 2021
time signature.jpg
were those clip starts/ends lined up with the grid before you changed the tempo? if you turn on the click, does it play in time with the music?
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

Ukho
Posts: 68
Joined: 30 Jun 2021

05 Sep 2021

selig wrote:
05 Sep 2021
Ukho wrote:
04 Sep 2021
The song, at first, was running at 120 bpm, being a 4/4, but after I turned it into 3/4 I had to go up to 170 bpm to kinda sound like 100 bpm.
I did adjust everything, because it is also shorter now, but the song itself runs perfectly fine.

I was just wondering if there is a musical term for it?
Wait - after changing to 3/4: how is the song playing slower, but is also shorter, but also the song itself runs perfectly fine?
I listened to the song which is in 4/4 (could be counted as 12/8 too), so why change it in the first place?
Starting by describing what you are trying to accomplish, THEN tellingus how you approached the issue may help us help you better. :)
It is 3/4, not 4/4 or 12/8.
The change into 3/4 was because 4/4 is like marching, 3/4 is more like flying. At least to me.
And, while composing the song, I was thinking about Bernard und Bianca, flying on the Albatross.
That is also why I took away every second note from the appregiato, to make it sound a little more bumpy.
And by saying the song runs perfectly fine, I meant that the only "issue" I recognized was the tempo;
that the 4/4 song played at 120 bpm sounds faster than the 3/4 song played at 120 bpm.

So my question was: is there a musical term for this, or may it be because of my arrangement?
From what I read in the comments it seems that the "issue" is somewhere hidden in my arrangement. :)
"Music is a place to take refuge. It's a sanctuary from mediocrity and boredom. It's innocent and it's a place you can lose yourself in thoughts, memories and intricacies."

Ukho
Posts: 68
Joined: 30 Jun 2021

05 Sep 2021

guitfnky wrote:
05 Sep 2021
Ukho wrote:
04 Sep 2021
time signature.jpg
were those clip starts/ends lined up with the grid before you changed the tempo? if you turn on the click, does it play in time with the music?
Yes, it does. It goes: 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, ...
"Music is a place to take refuge. It's a sanctuary from mediocrity and boredom. It's innocent and it's a place you can lose yourself in thoughts, memories and intricacies."

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selig
RE Developer
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Location: The NorthWoods, CT, USA

05 Sep 2021

Ukho wrote:
05 Sep 2021
selig wrote:
05 Sep 2021


Wait - after changing to 3/4: how is the song playing slower, but is also shorter, but also the song itself runs perfectly fine?
I listened to the song which is in 4/4 (could be counted as 12/8 too), so why change it in the first place?
Starting by describing what you are trying to accomplish, THEN tellingus how you approached the issue may help us help you better. :)
It is 3/4, not 4/4 or 12/8.
The change into 3/4 was because 4/4 is like marching, 3/4 is more like flying. At least to me.
And, while composing the song, I was thinking about Bernard und Bianca, flying on the Albatross.
That is also why I took away every second note from the appregiato, to make it sound a little more bumpy.
And by saying the song runs perfectly fine, I meant that the only "issue" I recognized was the tempo;
that the 4/4 song played at 120 bpm sounds faster than the 3/4 song played at 120 bpm.

So my question was: is there a musical term for this, or may it be because of my arrangement?
From what I read in the comments it seems that the "issue" is somewhere hidden in my arrangement. :)
Here's where the confusion is coming - changing time signature in a sequencer doesn't absolutely nothing but changes where the bar lines fall. You cannot change the feel in any way simply by typing a 3 instead of a 4 into the time signature window. I'm guessing this is why no one else can replicate your results.
OK this is the first I'm hearing of you taking notes away - that's not changing the time signature per se FWIW. But it's still unclear what all you actually did that caused this problem, certainly it appears it was more than just changing the time signature from 4/4 to 3/4. And also, we still don't know what you wanted to accomplish other than not marching, flying.

Sounds like maybe you had a track composed in 4/4, and you want to know how to change it to feel (and in fact to be) in 3/4. This involves in my experience COMPLETELY re-imaginging the song parts because of how drastically different it's going to feel - not to mention trying to re-arrange lyrics/melodies/changes to make sense in the new time signature. Yes, it's done all the time, but not without major re-imagining of the parts, at least in my experience.
Bottom line - you can't just take out 1 of every 4 notes and expect to still sound good (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't). Hopefully I'm understanding you (and making sense).
Selig Audio, LLC

Bes
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Posts: 1128
Joined: 22 Feb 2017

05 Sep 2021

appregiato = appreciated
arpeggiato = a passage to be played like harp music

the italian language can be so beautiful

are you by any chance using a rack device as arpeggiator? because that is going to have its own time division settings that further complicate your intention

either way, converting the time signature of a pre written song requires some mastery over the elements the song is written in. perhaps start a blank workspace with the desired settings and transcribe your previous track into it?
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