Speed parameter (Ticks/Pattern Lines) in addition to Song BPM

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What is the problem?

I’ve seen a lot of posts regarding “FX TIME”, It’s cool, but far from what SPEED is.
For example, I’m aware that a 120BPM track to play as i want to need to be set at 240BPM, but everything connected to the tracker would be affected, and this is a total mess.
This means I can work only at 1/16 resolution, and for my perspective It’s a huge restriction.

What do you want to achieve?

The ability to work at a fixed BPM and gain the benefit of increased “grid”, instead of having kicks hitting every 4 steps, having them hitting every 4, or 5 , or whatever i want (inside certain obvious limitations).
This will let me play triplets, or use a different resolution (1/32, 1/64, 1/128).
I want to achieve this:

Are there any workarounds?

Doubling the speed isn’t a real workaround, as explained up.

Any links to related discussions?

NO.

Any references to other products?

Almost every old school Tracker on the market since late 80s.
If this unit is built with old trackers in mind, I’m surprised there’s no SPEED parameter in it by default.

Related Discussion

A practical example;
At 120BPM SPEED06, my kick drum happens every 4 lines.
At 120BPM SPEED03, my kick drum happens every 8 lines.
This is not the same as doubling the speed, this gives me the ability to make music at different timing.

Clarification

I’m absolutely NOT asking for an FX to do this (anyway, could be a good addition), I’m asking for the implementation of SPEED parameter in the SONG page, maybe in an additional row close to BPM, like in every other Tracker to date.

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Hey @onoa Thanks so much for the wish. Have you tried using the micromove FX? You can move around within that 1/16 step using this FX. Do you think that would sort out the problem you would like to solve?

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Hi @dan.lgrnd, and thanks for your suggestion.
Not taking in account that this force me to use an FX column just for this task, do you think this is the same thing am I asking for?
This may help for flam effect, that can be achieved (probably) using arp also, but as the manual says, it’s a “swing” like effect, in fact, it works in %.
Honestly the SPEED parameter is something that make trackers different from all the others if you ask me.
Anyway seems that nobody need this feature, I’m asking myself how many real “old school” trackers are using this unit, because I’ve read of out of this world requests, and the more I use the unit, the more I see many “legacy” functions are missing.
I’m confident that the team can’t get everything done, and not everyone will be happy, but I think that the first point would be getting closer to what a tracker is (or was) instead of mimic what others sequencers are able to do.
Maybe I misunderstood the word “inspired” by trackers, and I was expecting something different.

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maybe i’m misunderstanding what you are trying to achieve. higher resolution yes? As an old Amiga Protracker/Demoscene dude myself, doubling the overall tempo is exactly what we used to do if we needed higher resolution to fit more triggers into tight spaces. Or ratcheting/rolls. Another old trick was to increase and decrease the tempo for portions of a pattern, this took a little bit of math so that the overall feel stays in sync.

What you are looking for i suppose is a way to disconnect a single track from the global speed so you’d have more steps to fill?

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Hi @Sandroid, thank you for joining the discussion.
As explained, doubling the tempo make useless the unit with external expanders, drum machines or whatever, the sync will be a nightmare.
I’m pretty aware of every old trick, I can assure you that, I made several vinyls in the past, many MODs for demos, intros and various purpose.
Are you aware of what the SPEED parameter is? Seems that everybody try to avoid this topic.
It’s the parameter immediately after BPM, in almost every tracker.
On top of that, this parameter could have been changed using a syntax within the FX column.

EDIT: let me give you a practical example.
At 120BPM SPEED06, my kick drum happens every 4 lines.
At 120BPM SPEED03, my kick drum happens every 8 lines.
This is not the same as doubling the speed, this gives me the ability to make music at different timing (and I suppose that who programmed trackers 30+ years ago used this parameter exactly with that in mind).

EDIT2: No, I don’t need to disconnect anything, this is confusing as hell!

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Aaah… i think i’m starting to understand… you are talking about the good ol’ F-- command on Protracker?

The separation between global clock/tempo from the speed of the steps progression. F-- was something i mostly used to introduce swing to tracks. or if used for longer to speed up parts and then bring them back to normal.

So you’d like a way to maintain a global tempo for external gear that is clocked by the tracker but have the possibility to increase step speed at any given point regardless of the global tempo?

I’m refering to this command btw (man it’s so nice that someone made videos for all these :laughing:):

For completness sake and for those that don’t know what this is all about, here’s also a deep dive that explains this concept a bit further:

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This.
Maybe not frequently used, but extremely helpful for many effects.
I used it a lot for gating, flaming, retrigger and others (like unusual timing, e.g. Triplet).
You can see this parameter from OctaMED to Fasttracker2, it was a standard.
I’m surprised no one feels the need of this :rofl::rofl::rofl:

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i’ve got around it so far with the swing and ratcheting step fx for the most part. But i agree this could be potentially nice.

I see now what you mean by how many old tracker users are using this device :laughing:

I’m sure you’d agree that we are also missing the jump commands? :blush:

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As said, the more I dive in, the more I realise many functions/effects are missing.
The jump function was another trip itself of course!
You’ve got my vote!

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and you’ll have mine. :hugs:

If you can, please update your wish with the videos and as much detail as possible to make this wish clearer. i think that might clear up the confusion as to what this wish i supposed to be.

This will make it easier for polyend to review wishes and see if they could implement this in a future firmware update. Much obliged :heart:

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Thank you both @onoa and @Sandroid for the above conversation. The wish is much clearer now :slight_smile:

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@onoa Thanks for your contribution. Unfortunately, the wish doesn’t fit our current product design direction.

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