Time signature spreadsheet or similar?

[miketheman]

Hi folks,

I’m trying to get a grip on how to understand and make good use of the step sequencer grid (i e OT) in relation to playing around with different time signatures (i e 5/4 or 7/8 etc). Either only one through the whole song. Or perhaps splitting a song in i e two parts (say 5/4 and then 4/4).

How do you go about in the grid? Do you scale them up? Is the arranger of any help?

Does anyone know of some kind of spreadsheet table (preferably regarding OT but any step sequencer would perhaps be close enough). Just to get an visual overview of the possibilities and potential culprits…

[PeterHanes]

how to understand and make good use of the step sequencer grid (i e OT) in relation to playing around with different time signatures (i e 5/4 or 7/8 etc).

Do you mean something like:
“make the pattern length an integer multiple of the time signature’s numerator”?

So if you equate 1 bar of 4/4 with a 16 step pattern, you might equate:

• 1 bar of 7/8 with a 14 step pattern,
• 2 bars of 5/4 with a 40 step pattern.

Elektron has always avoided traditional concepts of bars and time signatures in displaying patterns, much to the long-lasting grief of some of their biggest fans.

[knh]

This calculator helped me a lot

https://novinyl.net/octatrack.php

[miketheman]

Just while as I was typing my response to PeterHanes, I see the notification regarding the response from knh. A quick glance at the link… hmmm, that seems to be something along the thoughts I were thinking of: A spreadsheet or website, somebody must have done something!?

Thanks @knh and @PeterHanes!

[miketheman]

weehoou!

Really fun to setup OT arp to play Chameleon (Australis), while at the same time sampling from it outputs!

[mrcrappypantson]

This calculator helped me a lot

https://novinyl.net/octatrack.php

This is neat. thanks

[knh]

Thanks to @Kalimari who wrote the script!

Elektron Octatrack: Track Trigs/Multiplier to Master Length Calculator

If you’ve spent any time with an Elektron Octatrack, you’ve invariably used polymeter’s at some point. And once you begin using the track TEMPO MULTIPLIER, calculating the pattern MASTER LENGTH can become tricky. So I wrote a simple script to work it out for me. I guess this might be useful to more people that just myself, so decided to share a page: to work out each pattern’s MASTER LENGTH in a simple, Octatrack centric way. Hope it is of use. http://novinyl.net/octatrack.php

[miketheman]

Thanks @Kalimari!

[Kalimari]

No problem. The calculator also works for the digi/analog machines: thinking about making specific versions for them with matching track numbers. Watch this space…

[Microtribe]

You can have master track length set to inf, then in the pattern ‘chain after’ setting, set to desired step length rather than the default ‘pattern length’