Cut Time / Half Time (2/2) in hookpad

Will Cut Time/Half Time (2/2) ever be supported in Hookpad? I usually like to have my projects at a higher BPM (ex: 150bpm in 2/2 vs 75bpm in 4/4) since it’s easier to edit notes and syncopations. Its been really frustrating for me since all the instrument & drum presets are hardcoded to play in 4/4 and 6/8 and such, so I can’t get the correct “feel” of cut time.

If supporting Cut time may be technically difficult, a way to get around this could be to add a feature that can half or double the length of all the selected MIDI events (similar to MIDI transform → “Half Time” and “Double Time” in Logic Pro). That way one could half the length of all the midi events (4 beats of a C chord would become 2 beats) in their hookpad session and then reduce the BPM by half (say from 150BPM → 75BPM). I imagine this would be an easier implementation technically speaking.

Hi and thank you for your request. I‘m not sure I understand the difference between 2/2 and 4/4 on the technical side. 2/2 with 150 half notes per minute has musically speaking another vibe, but seen from the technical side it‘s still a bar with 4 quarters, 8 eights and 16 16th notes, right?

Nevertheless, I have plans for options to play each pattern in half or double its speed. Would this help?

Regards!
Dennis

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Hi Dennis, thanks for your response. Yes, metrically 2/2 @ 150 BPM should still be a bar with 4 quarters, 8 eights, and 16 16th notes; what Im alluding to is having the band instruments and their patterns be able to play in 2/2 “musical feel” similar to if the project was written in 4/4 @ 75 BPM. I believe having the option to play each pattern at half or double speed could work as a solution, but depends on what that technically means.

I created a quick chord progression example to help describe what Im referring to. If I manually double the length of all the chords and increase the BPM from 75 → 150, the band instruments would play the section as 4/4 @ 150 BPM. In reality, I’m trying to get the band to play 2/2 @ 150 BPM which should sound identical to 75 @ 4/4 BPM.


Let me know if this helps!

Yes, I think I understand it a bit better now. Playing all instrument patterns in halftime would exactly achieve this. You could double your song tempo, double the length of your chords and select half the speed for each band instrument and everything would sound the same again and you‘d basically have a 4/2 feeling.

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my daughter is a “drum colonel” in the high school marching band so i see a lot of percussion sheet music :slight_smile: . cut-time (2/2) is generally either used as a double time (rarely) and more for an additional 2 beats where needed to extend a measure of common time (4/4) to affect a “turn” or “repeat” etc where switching to 6/4 would not be correct.

in my mind, 4 bars of 2/2 = 2 bars of 4/4 regardless of tempo

Sounds good, Hoping the halftime instrument feature comes soon. Thanks!

Yeah, for those cases you could then use a meter of two beats, double the tempo and let the instruments play with half the speed. It’s technically not exactly the same, but I think for a simple application like Hookpad the meter selection menu should stay as simple as possible as well.

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Hi Dennis, I wanted to follow up to ask if there was any update on the status of this feature (instrument patterns played at half speed) Thanks!

Hi, unfortunately I didn’t have time yet, but there is a pretty big pattern update coming pretty soon.