[LAU] opinions from (potential) user perspectives wanted

[Gabriel M. Beddingfield]

On Fri, 2 Jul 2010, James Morris wrote:

> Still it raises some questions. This is fine if the app is timebase
> master, then 1/4 time is guarantee-able, otherwise, the not quite so
> simple approach to syncing 5/4 and 7/8 would be required.

If the app is the timebase slave... you just translate 
the "system" transport to your simple 1/4 transport. 
It's very simple to map any time signature to 1/4.

> It is something I've been wondering about without necessarily thinking
> about syncing 5/4 and 7/8 together.
>
> If in the app a pattern is edited with a 5/4 meter and the pattern is
> precisely 1 bar long (ie 5 quarter notes right!?!?) then what if the
> transport is playing at 4/4? Should the last beat in the 5/4 loop be
> dropped, or should it just offset the start of the 5/4 loop each time?

That depends on the application.  If you are taking pre-made 
clips and throwing them together into some kind of remix... 
then truncating the pattern makes sense:

    4/4: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
    5/4: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
    7/8: 1234567 1234567 1234567 1234567

Examples: EnergyXT, Hydrogen(?)

However, if you're an experimental sequencer pumping out 
semi-random patterns based on the size and placement of 
boxes on an xterm... I think overlapping patterns makes 
sense:

    4/4: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
    5/4: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
    7/8: 1234567123456712345671234567

Example: Seq24, non-sequencer(?)

-gabriel