Feature Request: Individual Time Signatures per Track

snowcrash · 2014-01-04T14:51:51.000Z

Ok, let’s pick up the idea to highlight feature requests with individual threads. I found there’s a lot of resonance on that issue:

Individual Time Signatures per Track in Advanced Mode

Even after the last glorious update and all that polyphony madness I found, that after a couple of weeks I miss that feature the most. It would open a completely new world of composing tracks to me (in combination with the arp) and btw. I always thought the A4 had that feature when I bought it, as the OT already got this implemented and honestly compared to any DAW sequencer it’s pretty basic. Especially since we’re limited to 4 bar patterns or pattern chains for now.

I’m also a bit worried how long I have to wait for that to be included in a new update and if it will come at all. I guess there will be no official statements on OS feature prioritization, but if there are a lot of people as desperately in need for that as me, maybe we can get some statement from Jon on if and when we could expect this to come.

Also what are your workarounds at the moment to get longer tonal progressions out of the A4? I tend to turn down the master-clock divider to a very slow setting and use the ARP to compensate for the lost 16th notes on the grid. But programming gets very unintuitive that way and you loose all the comfort of locking notes with the keyboard. Also doing triplets can be tedious that way too as you have to keep track of the note trigs for the arp to be on the matching steps.

Skab · 2014-01-04T15:37:10.000Z

I’d really like this function too. One other thing which I think should be fairly easy to implement is a hard sync so that every track can have its own master restart.

For example

T1 32 steps 1x - restarts every 2 bars
T2 16 steps 1x - restarts every 1 bar
T3 18 steps 1x - restarts every 5 bars
T4 38 steps 0.5x - never restarts

With this kind of flexibility it would be possible to have polyrhythmic patterns and yet still have some overall control over their cohesiveness. This was always my favourite feature of Five12’s Numerology sequencer, and something I wish both the A4 and OT had. It really is inspirational.

As for workarounds - I’ve found that using an LFO to control the amp level or filter cutoffs can provide a lot of evolution within a pattern, especially when multiple LFOs are tied to performance macros.

As the sweep of the macros can be set exactly and they can also be bipolar it should be possible to set up triplets if the release times of the notes are long enough, although I’ve never tried this.