Polyrhythms in Sonar?

[timothydog]

Does anyone know if there is a way to create polyrhythms in Sonar? I have yet to figure it out. As far as I can see, I'm limited to regular note values (i.e. quarter-notes, eighth-notes...) and I don't really feel like doing the math either.

[AlChuck]

Polyrhythms -- you mean one part playing in 3/4 and another in 7/8 simultaneously? I don't think there's a simple way to do that other than just playing it right and not caring that the sequence barlines don't correspond.

If you mean odd meters -- 15/8 or 11/8 or that kind of thing -- yeah, you can easily do that -- select Meter/Key from the View menu, then set the meter in the dialog box that appears.

[timothydog]

No, I don't mean odd-meter (that's easy to do) and I don't mean poly-meter. What I mean is I want 7beats in the place of 4 quarter notes in one bar (7:4 polyrhythm). I had a dinky old program called Trax from about 11 years ago that could do polyrhythms easily.

I use soundfonts to program drum beats for recording and I want to get whacky. I have no way of playing them for real because I don't have anything to trigger the sounds.

[AlChuck]

Ah, like eight-note triplets are a subdivision of a quarter note into three against one?

[timothydog]

Correct.
The most basic polyrhythm is the triplet (3:2 or 3 notes in the space of 2). Only I want complicated ones like 7:4 and 7:5.

[timothydog]

Or I guess you could say 2 half notes in the space of a whole.. 2:1. But I don't think that really counts as a polyrhythm.

[AlChuck]

Funny, I thought they were called tuplets generally, not polyrhythms. Oh, well.

Anyway, I seemed to recall something in Cakewalk relating to it and I found this in the SONAR help system:

Setting the MIDI Timing Resolution

Each SONAR project has a setting for the timing resolution, or timebase, that indicates the resolution of MIDI data. This resolution is measured in ticks or pulses per quarter note and is often abbreviated as PPQ. The default resolution is 960PPQ, which is accurate enough for most applications. In this timebase, each quarter note is represented by 960 ticks, each eighth note by 480 ticks, each eighth-note triplet by 320 ticks, and so on.

In some projects you may need a different timebase. For example, if you wanted to use eighth-note septuplets (7 eighth notes per quarter note) and represent them accurately, you would need to have a timebase that is divisible by 7, such as 168PPQ. [italics mine-AlChuck)] SONAR uses the timebase you choose for a project to determine the range of tick values in the Now time.

To Set the Timebase for a Project[list=1][*]Choose Options-Project and click the Clock tab. [*]Choose the timebase you want from the Ticks per Quarter Note list. [*]Click OK.[/list=1]

The timebase will be saved with the project file.

Not sure how useful this really is, and whether the notation stuff can represent it properly or what.

[1 1 Meta 2 2 2]

I beieve there has to be a time base in a Cakewalk project. So many ticks per measure. The irregular tuplets will be limited by that.

To remedy the ridiculous limitations of that I've been using Sibelius 1.4. It can do nested irregular rhythms. I don't know about 2.0 but 1.4 most certainly cannot due multiple simultaneous unique time signatures directly. And the work around is unreasonable. If you don't mind their snotty and arrogant attitude then Sibelius can be used for the irregular rhythms within a track and the tracker can be used to layer various time sigs together.

Just a note. Gardner Read's notation book is great for this. Also there is a page called Tempo Mental on Steve Vai's site that is excellent too.


Hope you get it solved,
Jeff

[timothydog]

Excellent,
Thanks AlChuck

That is what I meant by "doing the math" but it looks like that's the only way to go for me.

[timothydog]

Meta,
I've been screwing around with polyrhythms for a few years now.
Steve Vai's article is excellent. I have it bookmarked and come back to it every once in a while. So far I haven't attempted anything quitee as crazy as some of his last examples but I've got some pretty whacky stuff going on in some of my new songs.

I'm a big fan of Meshuggah and all their math-metal glory.

Thanks
Tim