I don’t know why, but sometimes the simplest things result in a great stumbling block for my brain. I’m trying to vary my beats and stumbled upon this channel and this vid.
But it seems that he’s got 8 beats per bar, vs. 16 beats like on the Rytm. So what do I do to configure the RYTM to be able to work with the video above? Set the sequence length to 8 notes instead of 16? Does this result in quarter notes or eighth notes? This is what is confusing me. It seems that he’s not in 4/4, but 2/4? I wish I understood theory better. This stuff seems very difficult for me to get my head around.
I only watched the first few minutes of the video.
In that period, the examples are in 4/4 time signature with the basic (1/4-note) kicks on steps 1, 5, 9, and 13 of a 16-step grid. That’s a very conventional way of working on an Elektron instrument because the tempo (expressed in BPM (beats per minute)) will accord with the values that are most commonly expressed.
Later, when two-bar patterns are described, you would extend your AR’s pattern length to 32 steps.
The Elektron sequencer doesn’t really deal with time signatures specifically. But the easiest way to treat it when beginning is to think of:
each page of 16 steps is one bar of 4/4,
so
every fourth trig (step) corresponds to one beat,
so
the tempo is in beats per minute,
and
each trig (step) is 1/16 of a note,
and
the number of pages corresponds to the number of bars in the pattern.
So to make a four-bar pattern in 4/4 time signature the AR pattern would be 64 steps long.
Things get more flexible with all the additional features that the Elektron sequencer offers but I suggest you stick to the above convention while you’re looking at basic tutorials like the one in your first post.
