Interpretation

Music notation is meant as a guide to performance, and rhythmic values are often not notated with metronomic precision. The Interpretation setting helps you produce a more readable score from real-time recordings. You should usually turn it off when adding notes via step input or with the pointer.

If Interpretation is turned on, notes are generally displayed with longer length values than their actual length, to avoid having many short rests. Short notes on a downbeat in 4/4 time, for example, are displayed as quarter notes. The score becomes slightly less precise, but is easier to read.

If Interpretation is turned off, note lengths are displayed as closely as possible to their real values, as determined by the Quantize value. In the following example, the same MIDI region is shown twice, the first with Interpretation turned off, the second with it turned on:

You can use note attributes to use Interpretation on individual notes, overriding the Region inspector setting. For more information, see Change the syncopation or interpretation of notes.