Ive been trying to track in different time signatures lately, like 3/4, 5/4, 7/8 etc. My problem is that it takes a lot of time for me finding the correct number of lines in order to make it loop when changing time sigs and resolution, like for example if I start the song with 6 beats of 3/4 in speed 6 in one pattern and then want to have 5 in 7/8 in another…
Iwas just wondering if anyone with experience in this area has some nifty way of figuring this out, or even if it exist some kind of scheme for this kind of stuff?
A trick I use is set the pattern length per the time sig I want. In Hex.
4/4 = 80 lines with highlight on every 8 lines
6/8 = 60 lines with the highlight on every 6 or 12 lines.
5/4 = 50 lines with the highlight on every 10 lines.
7/8 = 70 lines with the highlight on every 7 lines.
Obviously if you want just a bar of any sig you can divide any of the above by 4.
Wouldn’t it be most reasonable to make row highlight on every quarter note or every beat? Every 8 lines on speed 3 in x/4 and every 4 lines in x/8 signs? If you make f.ex. 7/8 with pattern length 70 and highlight every 7 lines, you get 16 7row beats. 7 row beats aren’t really very sensible (unless you are making some weird music). Nor it is sensible to put row highlights to anywhere else than on something that can be divided by 2.
I usually just put the highlight to 8 and multiply 8 by as many quarter notes I need for one bar, But f.ex. on 7/8 I need 3,58=28 rows for bar. If I then want to make 4 bar long pattern I make 428=116 rows, which equals to 70 hex, as stated above, and have to put a highlight to 4, because otherwise the areas between highlights overlap bars and make it difficult to see where the bars end. With one bar long pattern this would not be a problem, and would have propably left highlight to 8 rows because I don’t like excess highlights.
If I would have made 7 row bars I would be drifted off from the actual BPM setting and would also be unable to make backbeat hits without note delay command.