What are the part and the whole in an Event?

[archaic.tech]

@Jeff_Brown

Ah, so the logic of comparing parts and wholes happens entirely in Haskell. That makes sense, thanks. It still leaves unanswered, though, my question about onsets for synth Events. Are they the same -- will an Event whose part starts later than the whole fail to trigger a synth, or will it only fail to trigger a sample?

Yes—apologies if I was confusing on that point! In terms of synths vs. samples, Tidal doesn't know the difference and sends any event it encounters as a "play" event to SuperDirt as long as the event has a current onset (in terms of part and whole) and has the s parameter set.

The only counterexample I know of is the effect bus feature, which works by sending certain effect parameters as Supercollider messages regardless of the relationship between the part and the whole. As a result, these messages are sent every time Tidal samples the pattern (~20hz).

I think the answer to your general question is that Tidal has a lot to say about how complex patterns can be built and (by design) not much to say about what those patterns mean in terms of sounds or lights or whatever.