Reading Music on the Grid: Counting Ticks in Pro Tools & Logic

Reading music is a fundamental component of learning and performing on a musical instrument.  In the same way, if you want to edit music (well) you should understand how to read traditional music on a staff as well as on the grid in your editing software.  I believe knowing how to edit well is one of the most important skills you can develop to set your recordings and productions apart from the crowd, so this will be the first of many posts related to this topic.

The way that Pro Tools and Logic incorporate their grid system/ticks are different, so I will be going over both.

What are 'ticks'?
Ticks are the extra-small subdivisions within a quarter-note in a DAW.  This stems from the idea of ppq or ppqn (parts per quarter note) from the early days o f MIDI.  Initially, early MIDI gear recognized 24 ppq.  Nowadays, most DAW's by default are divided into 960 ppq, or ticks.  (At some point in the future I will do a post on tricks and benefits to setting up tracks to reference ticks vs. samples in Pro Tools.)

Reading Music on a Staff
Below is a fairly simple drum beat that I am going to use for the example showing how to read ticks in Pro Tools and Logic.  But first, a quick tutorial on how to read drum music in case you have never seen it before.

The top line is the high hat playing  1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

The middle line is the snare playing 2, the A of 2, and 4

The bottom line is the kick playing  1, 3, the & of 3, and the E of 4.

(If you don't know how to read rhythms go find some basic youtube videos to teach you!! It's important!)

Reading Music on a MIDI Editor
Here is the same beat viewed on a MIDI editor (this Logic but others would look very similar.)

For the purposes of being easy to read, I made the kick red, the snare yellow, and the high hat green.  However, those colors actually correspond to the velocity of the notes being played...... red kick the loudest, yellow snare medium, and green high hat the quietest.  (It is common for MIDI programmed drums for the kick to be C1, the snare to be D2, High hat to be A#2.)

Reading Music on the Timeline
Here is the same beat on the Logic timeline.  You can see the heavy kick on 1, 3, &, E. The moderate amplitude snare on 2, A, 4.  And the light high hat on 1&2&3&4&.

If you look closely above at the audio region you can see the green arrow/cursor on the kick drum beat on the E of 4.  In Logic this cursor location is identified by 1 / 4 / 2 / 1 as shown below:

The first "1" indicates the measure.

The "4" indicates the fourth beat of the measure.

The "2" indicates the sub-beat. (sub-beat: 4, E, &, A)

The last "1" indicates ticks. (How far off the sub-beat, in this case right on the sub-beat "E".)

In Logic there are 240 ticks per sub-beat.  There are 4 sub-beats per quarter note.  240 times 4 = 960

If instead the cursor were on the kick drum hit on the & of 3, the cursor location in Logic would read 1/3/3/1.  Go back and look at the above example until that makes sense.  

So how does this differ in Pro Tools?

Below is the same beat in Pro Tools.  You can see the audio version right above the MIDI version.

The bars and beats counter in Pro Tools is divided into three sections as apposed to the four in Logic.  If we go back to our previous example to show where the counter is on the E of beat 4, in Pro Tools it would show 1 / 4 / 240 as shown below.

The "1" indicates the measure.

The "4" indicates the fourth beat of the measure.

The "240" indicates the ticks. 

Right on beat 4 would be 1/4/000

The E of beat 4 would be 1/4/240

The & of beat 4 would be 1/4/480

The A of beat 4 would be 1/4/720

Adding 1 tick to 1/4/959 would yield 2/1/000.

There are 960 tick per quarter note, just like in Logic, it is just implemented differently.  

Our other example from above, the kick hit on the & of 3, would be indicated by 1/3/480.

It is important to have a basic understanding of these concepts to do common editing and programing.  Once you get the idea you can do some simple math to figure out how to do 32nd notes, triplets, shuffle feels, etc.    

1st Post: The most important concept of all.

So, as I was trying to figure out where I wanted to start with all of this blogging business, I realized that instead of any technical mumbo-jumbo I would make my first post about something more important than all that.... a topic that I am more passionate about than any of that stuff......hard work. My students hear me rant about it constantly, music is probably the the most competitive of all disciplines, and in order to be useful to someone, to be legitimately good, be it a studio musician, live performer, producer, engineer, or whatever, it takes LOTS of hard work. Period. There are three different simple, and similar, ideas that have really motivated me (and others) over the years that I want to share here.

1. "Very good things can happen if you actually care about your life moving forward." 

This was something I heard someone say once that I wrote down, made it my desktop, and my screensaver. It was someone who I admired greatly, who was a very successful musician/producer, and had accomplished more before the age of 35 than I probably will in my whole life. Before meeting him I remember thinking "How did he accomplish all of that?", and this was one of the very first things I heard him say. I can't tell you how many hundreds of times, literally, that saying popped in my head and it got my off the couch to go practice drums or work in the studio. Now one of my most fundamental mantras in life is just "Keep moving forward!"

2. 10,000 Hours. Live it.
This has become a popular concept in the last several years. You have probably heard about this. All sorts of studies have been done that show regardless of the discipline, whether talking about creative or non creative fields, it generally takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert at most things. If you do some math that amounts to about 40 hours a week for 5 years, or 20 hours a week for 10 years, or 10 hours a week for 20 years. You get the idea. If you are not careful, and have an unhealthy affinity for video games, Netflix, your couch, or any number of other things, it could easily take your whole life to get to 10,000, if at all. (This is a big pet-peeve of mine......  Person X:"I want to be a producer." ME:"What did you do last weekend?" Person X:"I binge watched three series on Netflix."////  Person Y:"I want to be a studio musician." ME:"What did you do last weekend?" Person Y:"I beat Halo 3 again.") I've actually started advocating that my audio production students shoot for 20,000 hours to account for inflation (joke), and the fact that the field they want to work in is much more competitive than most (not a joke).

3. "It's amazing what can happen when preparation intersects with opportunity!"
This is another quote that I took from someone that I greatly respect and that has accomplished truly great things. He explained it as an idea of there being a line of preparation and a line of opportunity that run parallel to each other throughout our lives. These lines cross occasionally in everybody's life and it is import to do everything we can to prepare (practice, rehearse, etc) for those rare great opportunity's when they arrive. He got this idea from his mentor who also happened to be a successful and influencial person.  See a pattern?

As you can see these all boil down to the same thing. Work Hard! There is a very, very real and inseparable correlation between being excellent at something and the amount of time put into becoming excellent at it. Sometimes I hear "So-and-so is just a natural. yada, yada.." ... for the most part, though, I think people understand it takes hard work to be successful. Of course. However, here is where I think the HUGE break down is, DISCONNECTIA MASSIVIA, NO COMPRENDE......... Most of the population, the average person, those who are just aspiring instead of doing, have a hard time comprehending the actual amount of sacrifice it takes to become truly excellent.  The sacrifice of time first and foremost, but probably also friends, and family, and creature comforts, and all sorts of stuff really. The definition of "hard work" to someone who has put in the hours and is successful is very different than the definition of "hard work" to the average aspiring musician, engineer, or anything else. To illustrate this I recently did some math where I calculated out the amount of hours my typical students would have towards their 10,000 by the time they graduate with a 4-year degree if they only work on the projects that are assigned, and not work on projects of their own. That amounts to about 500-750 hours after 4 years. Some of them would perceive that as really "hard work" and may even think that they are going to be experts by the time they graduate, but as you can see this is still a LONG ways from that "magic" 10,000.  Do you wanna be an expert, and be ready when opportunity crosses your path? Do some math.  Calculate when you want to arrive at your goal, and how many hours a week you need to practice to get there.

This ended up up being way longer than I anticipated. If you are still reading this........WHY??????? Get up and go practice something productive!!!! Keep moving forward! WORK HARD!!!