It would be very useful to be able to make the tracker play a different number of steps per track within one pattern. This would make the creation of polyrhythms/polymeters much easier.
What is the problem?
For the moment creating polymeters on the tracker is only possible in those cases where the number of steps in the different rhythms are all factors of the same total pattern length
What do you want to achieve?
Easier creation of polyrhythms/polymeters.
One way to achieve this could be to allow different number of steps per track, like in the Play.
Another way could be to set an effect that will make the Tracker jump to a specified position within the track. You could for example have track 1 that loops over say 32 steps whereas the track 2 has a jump effect placed on step 15 that points to the first position of the track thus effectively making the tracker only play the first 15 steps of the track 2 while playing 32 steps of track 1. The tracker would not play the tracks at different tempos i.e. the tracker plays the steps in each track at the same speed.
Are there any workarounds?
Make two patterns of different length and play tracks from the two patterns alongside each other in performance mode. This has many limitations compared to simply setting multiple track lenghts in the same project.
@pt3r If I understand this wish correctly, what is desired are different track lengths for the Tracker (like the Play has). The suggestion of position jumps is a possible solution to solve this problem assuming that the actual track length has to be the same for all tracks. However, if there would be a different way to implement different track lengths (again, the Play being an example), I guess you wouldn’t have a problem with that?
If we can have different track lengths inside one pattern then that would be as helpful as a reset/jump fx command. Different approaches towards the same solution. I don’t know what is the easiest to implement and/or makes most sense from an end-user point of view.
So far I used a workaround, whereby I make 2 patterns of different length and play tracks from the two patterns alongside each other in performance mode.
I have made some edits to make it clear that the result desired is multiple track lengths, and that there could be different ways to achieve this. What do you think?
As always, if you can name other products offering this possibility, that makes the case stronger.
And in this case, I’m not a “Tracker insider”, but isn’t this a feature request mentioned in other places? If you have links or at least references, it would be useful to mention them too.
Thanks for the contribution @pt3r ! Unfortunately, the current design and architecture of Tracker does not allow this. We would have to re-invent the product to achieve this and therefore I have to decline your wish, sorry.
