Arturia's Version 2.0 firmware for the BeatStep Pro introduced lots of new feature, but despite the marketing materials: polyrhythm was NOT one of them - watch to find out why!
thanks, I tried to figured it out (polyrythm vs poly meters) for like 1hour or so and your videos finally help me to understand the difference :) cheers from france :) Louis
well I think using a sequencer to explain that concept is a really good idea, because I watched drummer explain it and I was confused XD anyway thanks a lot ! :) :) :)
thank you this was quite clear and informative... ive known the difference on a more instinct level but could never really define it into what they each separately are.. this was helpful :) now i need to find a polyrythm sequencer with more than triplets
I'm glad it helped! I believe that you should look into the Squarp Pyramid - be warned its not cheap, but if you're looking for a comprehensive hardware sequencer - that's definitely one to check out!
@@OscillatorSink it's fairly simple to do polyrhythms with arbitrary numbers on the beatstep pro. For an X over Y polyrhythm, multiply X by Y to produce Z. Make a sequence of Z steps in length. Z steps can fit X pulses of Y steps in length and Y pulses of X steps in length. That might sound a bit more complicated than it is. Once you've done one you'll see what I mean. Eg: 2/3 looks like: .--.-- .-.-.- 6 steps total. 2 pulses of 3 steps. 3 pulses of two steps. 3/4: .---.---.--- .--.--.--.-- 12 steps total. 3 pulses of 4 steps. 4 pulses of 3 steps. 4/5: .----.----.----.---- .---.---.---.---.--- 20 steps. 4 of 5 and 5 of 4. And so on...
Thanks for clearing this up! I'm about to buy a BSP and this prevents some disappointment. It's not a huge deal, I'll just have to use a clock divider to get some polyrhythm in my patches :).
In order to allow polyrhythms, each sequencer would need the ability to have its own metronome/clock. A nice feature would be if the BeatStep Pro could then calculate the proper tempos for each sequencer, and have them controlled by a master Tempo, much like the Swing does.
Thank you very much for the clarification. Question : can I have combined rhythm in the beat step pro outside the triplets and 4/4? I need it for composing Ethnic music out side the 4/4 metronome pulse.
+Omar Saad you can vary the division down to 1/32 notes, which combined with varying the meter might get you where you want (and you can have triplets down to that resolution too), but it sounds that you're asking if there are other polyrhythm options directly available, in which case the answer is no.
I would not worry about the explanation in the last video it’s what you showed us what can be achieved doesn’t matter about terminology if they do look st someone’s else’s video
+nik frisbee true dat. It's this terrible situation where a lot of people know the term "Polyrhythm" (but not what it means) but aren't familiar with "polymeter". It's a minefield.
If you see them just as ratios you can see that they are essentially the same concept though, just in different tempos: think about a voice A playing a 6/8 pattern and a voice B playing a 8/8 pattern with the same pulse. Let's do the thing where we emphasize the first note of each pattern, so we can hear the shifting. It starts with A and B playing on the 1st count, next A playing on the 7th count, then B playing on the 9th count, A on 13th, B on 17th, A on 19th, then both playing on the 25th pulse, which is the start of a new cycle: A: x o o o o o x o o o o o x o o o o o x o o o o o x ... B: x o o o o o o o x o o o o o o o x o o o o o o o x ... If we speed this up and just forget about the counts (the "o" here), A is playing 4 times in the same anount of time when B is playing 3 times (the last "x" are the start of the new cycle). It's the same pattern, just generated a bit differently. Tadaa!
+ranzee av thank you! The terms get mixed up a lot (not least by me). I think possibly the fact that a couple of specific types of polyrhythm can be, sort of faked using polymeter is part of the problem.
Does the beatstep - or any other hardware sequencer that you know of - allow for polyrhythms in other divisions other than triplets? I’m looking for a way to create other combinations to play with things like quintuplet swing on my digitakt, but as yet haven’t found a solution. It can be done in Ableton pretty easily.
Hi, have you ever had problems with BSP that control by MIDI an a Volca Drum? i have set correct midi cc and everythings work but after some minutes Volca stop to play, play button enable/disable out of controls... There are some setting in BSP i'm missing?
Actually the BSP is still unable to do polyrythm within the drum sequencer itself, which is too bad. Also it cannot play drums in different divisions of time. For instance : you can't have one cell playing in 16ths, while another one plays in triplets or even in 32nds. That's too bad because if your drum sequencer is setup to play in 16ths you can't actually record the 32nds of the roller, and that would be crazy cool if it could ! Instant live glitchy hihats or even trap style hihat, without any tedious programming.
I'm not familiar with the Roland - if you can set different parts to different lengths then you're good to go for polymeter, but I'd be surprised if it could do polyryhthm outside of triplets - it's actually very rare on a drum machine. Some dedicated sequencers do though. I think the squarps do, and the cirklon of course. I think some of the polyend instruments do it too, but don't quote me on that.
I don't have a modular setup - but my understanding is you'd just send the clock output from the BSP to a mult and just distribute it to anything that needed clock - or just send gates from the sequencer tracks? I guess you could use the drum gate outs to have multiple different meter lengths as well?
That is not exactly what a polymeter is. The key part is METER. Polymeter is a specific type of polyrhythm, where two instruments or voices are notated in different meters - think Don Giovanni, or Götterdammerung. So in reality, it is actually a NOTATIONAL DEVICE for a polyrhythm that takes multiple measures to resolve. Of course, such a polyrhythm does not have to be notated polymetrically either, but some composers choose to, because it makes the individual parts easier to read on their own. The "sharing a pulse" definition for polyrhythm has little merit, because sequencers are pulse and meter agnostic - each step may or may not be a beat/pulse (as opposed to a subdivision), and step 1 may or may not be the downbeat of a measure, it's a matter of how the user chooses to perceive it - and because any polyrhythm can "share a pulse" if you make the pulse small enough, which is exactly what one usually does when working with a sequencer. You may or may not choose to call it a polymeter, but it's still a polyrhythm. Perhaps this is another case of electronic music geeks with little background in music theory mis-naming something (think rimshot).
@@Shane-zo4mg I can't think of a sequencer that let's you do that. The Korg sequencers have active steps, so you could achieve the same effect... But they don't usually have that many steps anyway. If you need those steps as a sequence you could bring in and out during a song, I'd just save them as another pattern. You could even be using scenes to arrange how the patterns switch?
A verry simple example of polyrytm would be a triplet 8th bassline played against a quarter note lead or 2 eigth notes lead line. Since a triplet 8th has to be played during the duration of 2 eight notes ( or one quarter ) , so 3 notes in 1 beat The notes have a different duration but are played within the same beat . If the beatstep can play triplets on one sequencer and regular eight notes on the other seq. it can do polyrytmic stuff. I don't have one to test
+Ward de jager Yes. But the point of this video is that the 'polyrhythm' feature added in v2.0 is actually a polymeter feature. I specifically point out in the video that the BSP already does do (a particular form of) polyrhythm already in the video.
+Mr the drums support polymeter only between drum parts. You can set the whole drum sequence to triplets though it believe - but you can't select that per drum sound.
And if it will be possible to select per Drum, It will be polyrhythm...!!! Perhaps Arturia will be in future have the possibility to take that...?! Thx for your very clear explanations about the BSP ver 2.0...
