How using a real 6/8 feel?

Elektron Gear Analog Keys/Four
#1

I wanna make patterns in real 6/8 or better 12/8 feel. Meaning the metronome/click from the sequencer is in 4/4 and now I need 3 notes per beat to create the feel. Once you’re in sync with any other device and set the 4/4 tempo there is no solution that I found. The only way would be to calculate a different tempo from the other stuff but that would be even more difficult. To me that’s unexplainable. It’s not so difficult to offer a 6/8 feel option so that three trigs/steps would equal one beat. DAW or MPCs are doing this since more than 25 years.
Any cool workarounds or tipps?

L.

#2

make your own sequenced metronome with CV impulses (Value Lin and Envs to taste) … pull an audio level impulse back into the Ext in (if free) and sequence the ‘clicks’ on the CV track (if free)

#3

Cool stuff!

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#4

What about the 3/4 or 3/2 scale setting? :thinking:

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#5

I never understood that- how to program in that- I suppose the sequencer should be moved to 12/16?

#6

I have to check that out tonight. Never saw that option until you mentioned it :slight_smile:
But I guess this is just about the click? The thing is how to get the triplet feel of a 12/8 groove while the master tempo is a straight 4/4?

#7

i don’t think there is a perfect solution for this. It’s quite weird I know. Combining microtiming and retrg. is the easiest I’ve found.

#8

It’s totally lame that there is no easy way for this. No wonder all music is written in the same feel on these kind of machines if the concept is just about 4/4 / 16notes per par, etc… For everything else one needs to find clever workarounds, no intuitive jamming possible…
Another good reason to say hello to modular sequencing like the Make Noise Rene or other devices…

Peace,
L.

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#9

Thats the way to go I think. Set your track or master to 3/4 of the tempo, and have your pattern length in 12s, or any multiple of 3, where 3 trigs resemble one beat (X-x-x-X-x-x || 1-2-3 4-5-6). 12/16 would resemble 1 measure, 24/32 would be 2 measures, and so on…
1 trig would be 1/8 in this case

To obtain the classical 6/8 feel you should try to accent every 1st and 4th hit to some extent, because this is where you usually put the accents in that kind of rhythm. Trying syncopation can be really fun within any triple meter.

Not sure which multiplier you need to choose for having the equivalent of a 1/16 step for these rhythms though. 1 3/4, I guess?

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#10

This brings back to mind the whole unmusical implementation of pages, in this scenario you’d have one page of 16 steps and one page of 8, rather than 2 pages of 12 steps - quite why it is like this is beyond me.

The best option is to use 1 pattern each of 12 steps then chain them, but it is not a proper solution.

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#11

Of course one can obtain a 6/8 feel by doing so, but one has to set a different tempo to to get it in 4/4. And that’s the basic idea of a 6/8 feel: The pulse is 4/4. It sucks.
@darenager: yeah, sucks big time. It would be so easy to just end the pattern/page after 12 and then go to the next page so that one continues with the same logic on the next pattern page.
One super simple solution for 6/8 would be: Keep the four beats on 1 5 9 13 and just have three 16th step per beat:
123 567 91011 131415 - I guess one of my old drum machines had this feature. Can’t remember if it was the Jomox xbase…
Anyway, Elektron is a 4/4 company obviously, :slight_smile:

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#12

So you mean by switching to x3/4 tempo you don’t get the 6/8 tempo, but rather 4/4 in triplets -> which would be triggering at a faster pace than 8ths in a 6/8?

I guess you could get a more realistic 4/4 to 6/8 tempo if you just stay at x1 tempo, cut your pattern length to 12 again and use the right accents for 6/8 1-x-(2)-x-(3)-x-4-x-(5)-x-(6)-x, right?

12/16 @ x3/4 Tempo: 3 trigs are the equivalent of three triplets over one beat (1/4)
12/16 @ x1 Tempo: 6 trigs are equivalent of 3/8s, aka half a measure of 6/8, where one trig resembles 1/16th

Personally I have the feeling you can get a lot of unusual time signatures out of the OT. It’s just a bit complicated if you’re new to it, and don’t see how the multipliers and pattern lengths should work together to achieve what you’re after.

#13

I agree that it seems very unmusical in that case, but I’m trying to see it from a developers perspective: You simply cannot know how the user is gonna think of his pattern and what it resembles. 12/16 doesn’t necessarily need to be a 6/8 or 3/4, and within electronic music the use of extended and condensed loops for polymeter is far more regular, than proper 6/8 signatures.

Your solution seems very fine to me for composing and preparing live sets. I’d appreciate a feature where you can split pages though :slight_smile:

Pattern length and sequencing on Elektron gear reminds me deeply of Trackers, to be honest.

#14

A simple way to know what the user wants is to allow a freely assignable steps and pages field, where each page consists of the number of steps specified in the steps field, the only time this would not work would be if pages of different amount of steps is required, in which case 1 page patterns could be chained.

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#15

Hello. I have worked on different time signatures on my Anlog Rytm and I now own an Analog Keys; I am programming with both at the time on a 7/8 track.

I simply had a 12/8 based programming (actually 60/64). I made an excel file that always help me to know where the first step is. Tempo is calculated with a simple equation

#16

Yeah, we do a lot of compound/ odd meter feels in xuiqen.

The only real difficulty I ever encounter with scaling to 3/2x or 4/3x is the divisions for time-based effects stay the same. Meaning, it’s easy to get dotted 8th delays when scaled to 1x; you just drop to 24 (or 12 for dotted 16ths/ 48 for dotted 4ths)… but trying to get dotted 8th note triplets is rough. 21 is as close as you can get, and it’s rushing. (43 for dotted 4th triplets are much closer, etc)

  • I actually imagine this is why they haven’t ported independent track scalings across from the OT: OT’s FX are serial/ track dependent so having time based FX that compliment independent scalings is more feasible than it is with only a single set of master sends.

I get the desire for page lengths that adjust to a chosen meter — It’s actually my biggest gripe with the Push, as I believe it should be able to give proper representations of a chosen meter in Ableton.

That said, I don’t mind it so much on Elektron boxes. If your brain really needs you to stay on a single page, conditional trigs should have you (largely) covered.

Regarding the question of how to program in 3/4 or 3/2:

  • 3/2x gets you 6 divisions per beat (16ths become 24ths).
  • 3/4x gets you 3 divisions per beat (16ths becomes 12ths).
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#17

The current Elektron sequencer is quite capable of odd, complex or compound meters. It’s made a ton easier with conditional trigs and I would love the ability to choose how many steps we see per page, but it’s not at all impossible. All the tools are there.

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