Polymeter in the DAW

[mek42]

I have an idea for a piece where voice A will be 7 bars of 5/4 followed by 5 bars of 2/4. Voice B will be 15 bars of 3/4, voice C will be 15 bars of 6/8 and voice D will be 5 bars of 9/4.

Can this be done in your DAW so that I could see the correct measure/beats on each voice? (And if so, which DAW is it?)

[Jafo]

Just draw it in; every DAW allows you to set the time signature for individual sections. Here's a ss of an ancient project I just opened:

hollow points ss.png

[mek42]

I don't mean per section, I mean per voice.

So for the first 45 beats of the whole song:

Drums: 7 bars at 5/4 then 5 bars at 2/4
Melody 1: 15 bars of 3/4
Melody 2: 15 bars of 6/8
Pad: 5 bars of 9/4

I've sort of poorly figured out how to do this in reaper, but only the entire project can have mixed times. Like, using the above example, if I wanted pad to be 4 bars of 9/4 and then 3 bars of 3/4 I don't think I could do this in the pad track.

[Niowiad]

Just set the metronome in a 'BBBB' pattern (all beats with the same sound so it doesn't throw you off), feel the tempo, count the beats. Not sure what else is needed.

Quick example according to your list, played on a different octave and accents for each voice:


The variation for "pad" from 9/4 to 3/4 would get done the same way it's showed in the video for "drums" going from 5/4 to 2/4

[Tj Shredder]

As long as all beats are the same, it would not be a problem. It would be interesting if each track also had a different tempo…
Basically what you want is a polyrhythm. Of course a DAW will work with whatever meter you choose. Do you construct the tracks by hand or do you actually want to play and record them?
A DAW usually does not care where the bar lines are. If you had different tempi, it simply can‘t aid you with quantization anymore… Different meters just have different accents which you can easily just play as intended…

[pdxindy]

I don't mean per section, I mean per voice.

So for the first 45 beats of the whole song:

Drums: 7 bars at 5/4 then 5 bars at 2/4
Melody 1: 15 bars of 3/4
Melody 2: 15 bars of 6/8
Pad: 5 bars of 9/4

I've sort of poorly figured out how to do this in reaper, but only the entire project can have mixed times. Like, using the above example, if I wanted pad to be 4 bars of 9/4 and then 3 bars of 3/4 I don't think I could do this in the pad track.

One can do this in the DAW, but it gets complicated cause you can only have one time signature grid at a time. I would use a step sequencer plugin of some sort cause each instance can have its own time signature.

I prefer Beat Scholar cause it has a unique structure well suited to uncommon timings.

https://www.modalics.com/beatscholar

[NAD]

Keep the project in 4/4 and take care of the divisions yourself.

1.png

[jules99]

SCR-20230719-pxuc.png

In Ableton Live, you can have varying meters for each clip. Not sure if other DAWs offer this. So you could have five clips in a single instrument with different time signatures. I'm not sure who you would easily line them up in arrangement, however.

[GuyaGuy]

I don't mean per section, I mean per voice.

So for the first 45 beats of the whole song:

Drums: 7 bars at 5/4 then 5 bars at 2/4
Melody 1: 15 bars of 3/4
Melody 2: 15 bars of 6/8
Pad: 5 bars of 9/4

I've sort of poorly figured out how to do this in reaper, but only the entire project can have mixed times. Like, using the above example, if I wanted pad to be 4 bars of 9/4 and then 3 bars of 3/4 I don't think I could do this in the pad track.

If it's a polymeter that's all using the same pulse, it's mainly just a question of math, which you've already done. The only other thing is to figure out the time signature of your project, which in your case could just be 4/4. If you use a click that accentuates the downbeat, it may be confusing, so you can either try to work with it or replace it with your own pulse track that you can delete. I don't know what kind of composition you're making, but I would probably end up breaking up the bars, for example making the 15 bars 5 clips of 3 bars, just to make it easier to scan. But that depends on the musical phrases, of course. It may help to line up blank clips first to make sure you got all the math right for each track/voice and see where the repeats may fall.

There are also plugins that allow for easier programming of both polymeter and polyrhthm. The ones that come to mind are Numerology (Mac only) and Seeds (Max4Live), so I'm not sure I have a helpful suggestion there. But I've done what you're setting out to do in Ableton just with the standard sequencer. It's polyrhythms that get tricky to program without specialty sequencers!

[neverbefore]

polyrhythms in Reaper aren't too bad either as you can set the grid to whatever divisions you want eg 2/9 and play along to the click. Reset the grid to something else and play again etc etc What is much trickier is to set individual tracks to play at a different speeds in Hz or BPM, but you can set item/clip rates to whatever you want so clips can play in ratios to one another and the global speed
And you can embed different projects with completely different settings within a global project and work that way

One way to do polymetres might be to set up prerecorded click tracks into colour coded segments so that 4 beats was blue, 5 green, 6 red etc etc with the beat number as name. Then at least you could have some sort of visual guide as well as the audio by concatenating the colour coded segments. Save as track template with items included and you can load up this track to use for every project/song

[GuyaGuy]

SCR-20230719-pxuc.png

In Ableton Live, you can have varying meters for each clip. Not sure if other DAWs offer this. So you could have five clips in a single instrument with different time signatures. I'm not sure who you would easily line them up in arrangement, however.

Unfortunately that's just a reference tool and doesn't have any functionality behind it.

Screen Shot 2023-07-22 at 7.55.08 PM.png

[GuyaGuy]

polyrhythms in Reaper aren't too bad either as you can set the grid to whatever divisions you want eg 2/9 and play along to the click. Reset the grid to something else and play again etc etc What is much trickier is to set individual tracks to play at a different speeds in Hz or BPM, but you can set item/clip rates to whatever you want so clips can play in ratios to one another and the global speed
And you can embed different projects with completely different settings within a global project and work that way

One way to do polymetres might be to set up prerecorded click tracks into colour coded segments so that 4 beats was blue, 5 green, 6 red etc etc with the beat number as name. Then at least you could have some sort of visual guide as well as the audio by concatenating the colour coded segments. Save as track template with items included and you can load up this track to use for every project/song

Yep, you can do the same in Ableton. It can be useful, but I usually just choose one track to be the "Leader" that defines the overall length and sort of a "master pulse."

Here's a simple 4/4 and 3/4 polymeter in Ableton, all meeting up neatly at 12 repeats.

Screen Shot 2023-07-22 at 7.53.03 PM.png

[neverbefore]

polyrhythms in Reaper aren't too bad either as you can set the grid to whatever divisions you want eg 2/9 and play along to the click. Reset the grid to something else and play again etc etc What is much trickier is to set individual tracks to play at a different speeds in Hz or BPM, but you can set item/clip rates to whatever you want so clips can play in ratios to one another and the global speed
And you can embed different projects with completely different settings within a global project and work that way

One way to do polymetres might be to set up prerecorded click tracks into colour coded segments so that 4 beats was blue, 5 green, 6 red etc etc with the beat number as name. Then at least you could have some sort of visual guide as well as the audio by concatenating the colour coded segments. Save as track template with items included and you can load up this track to use for every project/song

Yep, you can do the same in Ableton. It can be useful, but I usually just choose one track to be the "Leader" that defines the overall length and sort of a "master pulse."

Here's a simple 4/4 and 3/4 polymeter in Ableton, all meeting up neatly at 12 repeats.

Screen Shot 2023-07-22 at 7.53.03 PM.png

exactly and for the OP wanting say three lots of 4/4 and then two of 3/4 it is just a matter of having three orange and two purple in a line in the one track and playing along to that. Each recorded track could have its own associated guide track - obviously doubles up track numbers but is still a reasonable workaround

[jancivil]

3 and 4 fitting into 12 is so obviously simpler than the problem set before us, good grief.
then it seems a bit obtuse to launch into total workarounds to the time signature whole thing from a clearly time-signature-centric thrust...

[] per voice.

the first 45 beats of the whole song:

Drums: 7 bars at 5/4 then 5 bars at 2/4
Melody 1: 15 bars of 3/4
Melody 2: 15 bars of 6/8
Pad: 5 bars of 9/4

math [, ...] you've already done. The only other thing is to figure out the time signature of your project, which in your case could just be 4/4.

It really couldn't because 4 doesn't go into 45 (let alone the fact that not one of the given time sigs is in 4 ).

past saying that, I'm loathe to respond as the problem seems like something someone just a' wantin' ta troll would concoct (let alone the musical meaning of 5 bars of pad in 9/4, youknow, vs drums in 35 + 10). And then I note that a visual "per voice" is called for before we have a DAW in front of is that will do this at all.

*sigh* if this is somehow real (and I bit off quite a lot before I arrived at my troll hypothesis):
If it's absolutely essential to have the visual indicate all of that, there are very few options around, DAW-wise.
(REAPER I'm really not featuring as one of them.)

If we proceed from the idea drums are probably important to a rhythmic schema, we might want the <single time signature> to be a factor of 5, but the prevalence of 3 as a factor - particularly that 9 - does throw the spanner in the works. I would say 45/4 and move on.

[neverbefore]

my solution does anything you are complaining about within the current restrictions It is just as easy to make something 73 beats long as 12, easy to have any division of the bar for every bar and everytrack