I’m thinking about building a master BPM clock that outputs a beat, and divides it by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 ,12, and 16 to cover the common intervals. I’d like to include some form of shuffle similar to the one in the 4ms SCM eurorack, but I’m at a bit of a loss as to exactly how that might work in this context. Any suggestions?
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If you wanted to recreate a eurorack master clock based around BPM, may I recommend Pamela’s New Workout?
It’s been in my case for a while now and it’s definitely on the “never sell” list. If you had any questions about behavior I could experimentally verify it.
Old Linn machines had shuffle quantized to 24 intervals over a quarter note. But I guess real question is does that scale with the divided clock?
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Actually, I didn’t know you could get a shuffling clock divider kit for DIY. Maybe that will be my next project. It doesn’t look too hard.
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What you’d have to do is pick an interval that is shuffled - usually 8ths or 16ths. Depending on which is selected, some of the divisions won’t sound shuffled.
I didn’t actually realize myself that there was such difference between swing and shuffle. But this topic might hold some wisdom to follow.
Interesting article. Always neat to learn something new. I used the “shuffle” term because that what 4ms uses, although from this article, that doesn’t appear to be its common usage. I guess the question I really have is If I “swing” the eighths, what should happen to the 16ths, 32nds etc? Or should the swing be selectable for each division separately? If the latter, should each division have a separate control for the amount of swing? I don’t want to build something that is overly complex since that usually means more CPU, but at the same time I want it to be useful.
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As I understand it, only the 16ths and 32nds, etc that line up with those 8ths are affected.
So if you have
x---x---x---x--- quarter
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x- eighth
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx sixteenth
x---x---x---x--- quarter
x-s-x-s-x-s-x-s- swung eighth
xxsxxxsxxxsxxxsx sixteenth
…I think!
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Well it all comes down to what sounds good. If the beat is funky, then either definition is well suited for the task.
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Actually that sounds pretty logical to me. The approach 4ms used in their SCM unit is very flexible but I think this approach is closer to what I had in mind. Thanks for the help! I guess I’ll give it a shot and see how it turns out.
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