Beyond 64 steps and different time signatures

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

As of late, I’ve been pattern chaining and slowing tempos down to really get beyond the limitations of 64 steps. A lot of my sequences lately have been 128 steps, but over the last few days I’ve created a song with three different parts, each with 96 steps.

I don’t know much about music theory as it regards time signatures. But I am curious about what a 96-step sequence does to a time signature. Anything? Nothing?

I know that it sounds good. But this might really have more to do with my chord progressions and the counterpunctal possibilities across multiple melodic tracks on the Digitakt.

The reason I pose this question is because in IDM, you often hear tracks that go beyond 64 steps, but they don’t seem be 128 steps either. I wanted to experiment with this type of sequencing in my own way.

Ultimately, time signature doesn’t matter. If it sounds good, then who cares. I’m just wondering if I’ve slipped into a different time signature.

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#2

It will basically be some kind of meter based on three. 12 steps could be 3/4 and 96 is just a longer 3/4. I’ll throw in a, I think :slight_smile:

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#3

96 steps has no real influence on a time signature. It could still be 4/4 but just 6 measures in stead of 4 or 8.

Time signature is programmed by creating 1 measure with a certain amount of quarter/8th/16th notes for instance. Like 7/8. To make different time signatures a bit more organized and easy, you can chop them into counts. So 7/8 is easily counted as 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 as an example. Or 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 etc. The accent would be on every 1.

On the digitakt you could achieve this by programming a kick sequence with a step length of 14 (that’s 14 16th notes so 7 8th notes). And then base your track around that, working with counts of 7, 14, 21 etc. Steps on each track. You could of course add polymeters to make it more complex.

Hope my explanation is clear enough. There’s a lot to explain and explore when it comes to time signatures but these are the basics more or less. Let me know if you have more questions.

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#4

What he said

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#5

So, programming a sequence in 6/8 would be 48/64, stresses on 1 and 4?

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#6

it could be any number of steps that is a multiple of 6.
the 6 short steps = 1 measure.
2 measures of 6/8 = 12 steps, etc.
within that, your accents could suggest 4-2 or 2-1-3 or whatever. Iif you end up doing 3-3 it’ll sound more like a fast 3/4 than a 6/8.
It can get confusing on the Digitakt to keep track when you’re using different time signatures, if you want to put a kick on every 6th beat, it’s visually more difficult than with 4/4 but definitely worth trying out.

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#7

Yes, it makes sense! It would be interesting to mess around with that timing, or others for that matter.

#8

You should probably read up a bit about different time signatures, compound meters and such. Just to get an idea on how they are traditionally accented. It’s not that difficult to get your head around the basics, and then it will be much easier to apply it to the Digitakt

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#9

I was working on a 6/4 track with a step length of 12, but I noticed that conditional trigs don’t work like they should. No problems when I made it a 48 step sequence. I assume it has something to do with the <16 step sequence… Anyone else run into this? I only got my DT last week with 1.04 pre-installed, so perhaps it’s something that has already been fixed and I should just update the firmware…

I love to use time signatures different from 4/4. Really into 5/4 lately, but it requires a little more thought when you’re doing stuff like that on the DT.

#10

Definitely should update to 1.10. Lots of improvements and new functionality.

The conditional trigs should work like they are supposed to though even on 1.04. I guess you mean the ratio conditions? 1:4 means it will trigger once every 4 cycles. If a cycle is 5 steps, it will trigger once every 20 steps.

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#11

Any resources in this domain that you could recommend? By an electronic musician, ideally, who doesn’t assume everyone is well-versed in music theory and accompanying terminology?

#12

Cool, will definitly update tomorrow :slight_smile:

The thing I ran into happens with ratio conditions only. If I use a ratio condition on a track <16 steps it either ignores the condition completely and plays every time or it doesn’t play at all. I guess I’ll just see what happens after I update!

#13

What about if you want to mix time signatures? So you have the right hand doing 3/4 and the left doing 2/4 (if on a piano).

Thinking if I used 12 steps with… I need to boot up the DT.