[linux-audio-dev] XAP: a polemic

Tim Hockin thockin at hockin.org
Wed Dec 18 22:08:00 UTC 2002


> > for the plugin to *understand* the meter, you'd need more
> > intelligence than any computer can offer anyway. there's no
> > difference between 4/4 and 4.0/4.0 but there is a whole lot of
> > difference between a wes montgomery 4/4 and a deep purple 4/4.
> 
> I'm not talking about AI - just that if you want 4/4 shortened just 
> slightly, you should still be able to have simple beat sync plugins 
> understand that you still want 4 beats, not 15 or 31 or whatever.

Well, actually, it is still plausible with integer values, we just ened to
look at meter somewhat differently.

a 4/4 measure has 4 steps, one beat is one step (we know bpm and timebase)
a 3.5/4 measure has 7 steps, one beat is 2 steps
a 3.95/4 measure has 395 steps, one beat is 40 steps

This doesn't much relate to 'meter' in the traditional sense.  It does allow
you to use integral numbers and have your beat-sync still work.  Is that
worthwhile?  I don't know.  Do we want the user to enter '3.95 beats' or
'395 ubeats'?  It CAN work, is what Tim (the other) is saying.  Does
integral values buy us anything?

> > >The "breaking" of the periodicity is sometimes *intentional*, and
> > >often so subtle that you can't reasonably "count" to deal with it.
> > >63/64ths...?
> >
> > go ahead, you can do this without fractional beats -- as you
> > say, use 63/64.

63 ubeats per bar, a beat is 16 ubeats


But what does that buy us?



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