Irregular time signatures and the Elektron workflow - thoughts?

Ahh i didnt catch the pattern chaining workaround! Thats super helpful, thanks man.

Just came across this issue when wanting to work in 3/4. Pattern chaining 1 bar patterns is the only and best possible way to make this happen.

As a relatively new AK user, I would have to agree unless I am missing something. Played in a nice ā€œgrooveā€ in 7 and then am forced to do maths to figure out where i amin the pattern.

3 Likes

Try feeding the midi output of ā€˜Beat Scholarā€™ into whatever variant of the Elektron sequencer you have.

1 Like

ā€¦music is based on mathā€¦
elektron sequencers are in essence all the same and also based on nothing but mathā€¦
so, whenver u want ā€œoddā€ countings, use ur fingers and do some mathā€¦itā€™s all in thereā€¦

while even straightest 4/4 can get an easy forever rolling twist with only one polymeter element involvedā€¦
so, dedicate one single track of each pattern and shorten it a little, let it run ā€œout of timeā€ and see where it can take all ur slave to the rhythm mantrasā€¦

2 Likes

Music is also meant to be playableā€¦ In music notation someone invented bars for a reason.

1 Like

ā€¦playableā€¦repeatableā€¦doableā€¦roundableā€¦

in the meantime, everything countsā€¦
3.1415927ā€¦only the first seven digits after komma into the eternity of piā€¦
the endless battle for the quadrature of the perfect circleā€¦
each 'n every boing, bumm, tschakkā€¦needs some klak zakk zakkā€¦and backā€¦

Yes I realize that. But if Iā€™m thinking/playing in 7 (or 14), for example, pages donā€™t line up to ā€˜barsā€™. Not insurmountable of course, the maths is not that complicated but itā€™s slightly annoying.

1 Like

Man, we donā€™t need to downplay it. Itā€™s crazy lame. Iā€™m a math teacher. You think I wanna be doing math on my time off? Hell no! I get home, and all numbers go out the door. Quick, whatā€™s 2 + 3? Hell if I know! Iā€™m at home, b*tches!

Naw, but seriously, itā€™s pretty annoying.

2 Likes

As such you canā€™t really do odd time signatures on Elektron gear.
It is doable but who wants to make maths while creating? Personnaly it is a killer, iā€™d never recommend to anyone whoā€™s interested to get Elektron. And not only because i suck at maths :wink:

Some simple solutions exist and are still ignored :man_shrugging:t3:

1 Like

Being able to set number of steps per page would be really helpful when copying and pasting pages, too. I made a feature request video a while back with more details on how and why this would be helpful.

Another way to solve this time signature issue is if there was a trig condition to skip a trig entirely. Then you could just set the ā€œskipā€ trig condition on the last 4 trigs per page to effectively get 3/4 time signature.

6 Likes

That ā€œskipā€ trigger condition actually could be a nice idea because you could combine with probability for some interesting variations. It wouldnā€™t be as smooth for copying pages etc though. Either would be an improvement though.

1 Like

Iā€™ve just got a little sheet like this that I look at if Iā€™m going a bit mental with the step counts.

If you do the rows in different colours itā€™s easy to spot what number is where. It becomes second nature pretty quickly.

3 Likes

I think the most natural is to not think about it so much. Just make the sequence duration so that it adds up (63 for 7/8 for example). Make the element that grounds the time signature first ( here you would have to count a little). After that just go by ear for the rest of the elements. No need to count

If youā€™re live recording, this works just fine. But if youā€™re manually placing trigs in grid edit mode, it becomes a nightmare once youā€™re past the 1st page. If you have a 3/4 time signature, you can set the page length to 48 steps. But this means that the downbeat of the 2nd bar is on step 13 on the 1st page. And the downbeat of the 3rd bar is on step 8 of the 2nd page. Everything becomes skewed and hard to work with, and it makes it impossible to copy and paste pages. Instead of copying a bar in 3/4 time, youā€™ll be copying 4/4 worth of trigs, which include parts of 2 bars, and may or may not include 2 downbeats. Itā€™s the reason I sometimes restort to ā€œconvertingā€ my 3/4 idea into 4/4 just to avoid this.

I put the downbeats for 4/4, 3/4 and 7/8 time on @Fin25ā€™s sheet, just to illustrate how non-conducive the locked 16-steps-per-page is to non-4/4 time. With 4/4 time, all the downbeats land on step 1 on every page, but for anything else you canā€™t copy-paste pages any more because the downbeats donā€™t align with the page length.

1 Like

Having steps per page would be ideal, but it would already be a huge improvement to the current implementation if the metronome settings were used to color-code the downbeat trig, for instance.

For some rythms youā€™ll end up having to use micro timing, itā€™s just not serious.
Plus the fact that we are speaking about polyrythms, letā€™s not even think about polymeters.

1 Like

As long as you use 1 page patterns (below 16 setps) with trig conditions, itā€™s dead easy to use odd time signature.
Is it possible to alling as many irregular patterns as you want in song mode?

Sure, but using only 1 page really limits your options when it comes to stuff like chord progressions and longer melodies. Using song mode to string together many 1-page patterns could work, but since the digi-boxes donā€™t have kits your parameter tweaks wonā€™t carry over to the next pattern.

2 Likes