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.
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