Patterning shifts and rotations

Questions and Answers
1

Playing with shifts and rotations with euclid patterns, and looking for more performative ways of manipulating time shifts. Here's an example pattern

d3
$ stack [
  every 2 (rotL (1/12)) $ s "clap:3(5, 12)" # pan 1,
  s "shaker*12" # n "10" # pan 0
]

Right now the shift is expressed in terms of units of pattern (2/12).

Patterning fractions is a bit difficult though for performances' sake. I've tried this method for a more mini-notation style

d3
$ stack [
  ("<0.0833 0>" <~) $ s "clap:3(5, 12)" # pan 1,
  s "shaker*12" # n "10" # pan 0
]

But converting to a fraction feels really tedious. Is there an easier way to explore the patterning of time-shifts?

2

Actually I'm finding this accomplishes the effect I'm looking for :slight_smile: but if there are any other creative ideas I'd love to know

d1 
 $ while "t f" ((# speed 2) . (# pan 0))
 $ someCycles ((1/16) <~)
 $ ply 2 . struct "t(7,16)" 
 $ s "bd"
 # orbit 0
3

I'm not in a position to understand the effect here, but one of the things @kit-christopher put me onto was using plyWith with shifts eg

d1 
 $ while "t f" ((# speed 2) . (# pan 0))
 $ someCycles (plyWith 2 ((1/16) <~)
 $ struct "t(7,16)" 
 $ s "bd"

Not sure what that will sound like, but it demonstrates the idea :slight_smile:

4

Thanks @cleary this is wonderful. I should try to clarify exactly what I was going for...

Time shifts take a pattern and move the entire thing e.g. ((1/16) <~) rotates a euclid pattern around by a 16th of that pattern, and works well if you have a euclid pattern divided by 16, 8, 4, etc.

What I was looking for manipulates the (1/16) in interesting ways. And in my opinion someCycles does that pretty well because it's adding that element of chance. I think "iter" and "whenmod" could do that as well.

I didn't know about plyWith, it seems that only affects the repeats and not the original? Very useful either way.

2 Likes
5

I was searching for a solution in which one could apply a function globally to simulate a DJ Screw-style beat chase. It works well if you have a pretty simple, straightforward 4/4 beat. I think I patterned an 1/8 note shift. Almost guaranteed this effect is not going to sound too great with some super odd euclid patterns :wink: but someone please prove me wrong!

1 Like
6

Explanation of the effect:

Given your pattern you'll have it ply 2, which means, it'll take each element in the pattern and double it in the same way [something]*2 does. When using an euclid such as t(7,16), this means you'll have each active sixteenth turned into 2 consecutive thirty-seconds (note if you had used ply 3 they would be 3 forty-eighths and so on). What plyWith allows you to do is applying some function to the new sub-repetitions you get from using ply. In this case it simply shifts them back a 1/16. Essentially putting these repetitions a thirty-second before the original notes instead of after.

It's kind of as if you could do t(7,16,[0,-0.5]) ! (which you can't, euclids don't take fractionals there)