[Octal-dev] Re:rythms

[richardt]

I think there's a tendency of making timing more complicated than it
is.  

If you want to put one subdivision of the beat against another, you need
the GCM (greatest common multiple) resolution.  This is a tempo
setting.  So to allow for three against two (8th triplets against
8ths) you need 6 slots per quarter note.  If you want quintuplets against
8ths, you need 5x2=10 slots per quarter note.  Then it all fits on the
grid.  (to get triplets and quintuplets and eighths you need 15
slots).  It may not be pretty but it will work.

MIDI setups work this way, on a fine user-defined scale of 60 to hundreds
of 'ticks' per quarter note.  But it's still all based on GCM, as
the standard values all have many divisors.   If I understand tracking
(which I don't claim to do), you traditionally have 64 slots to work with
at a time.  So maybe the problem is that as the resolution gets finer, it
gets to a point where a single measure won't even fit.  But this is easy
to overcome.  Is there something else that I don't see?

Regards,

Richard Todd