Sim'n Tonic Forums

Original topic: viewtopic.php?t=32

This is about implementing tempo decimals down to the 100th (bpm in XXX.YY).
The feature will be able to be activated/deactivated.

When activated, you will need to hold the Tap Tempo button down and turn the knob to be able to see and modify the decimals. When doing so, the display will show for example ".45", which means the current tempo is "xxx.45". If the integer part of the BPM is changed (for example by turning the knob), the decimal part will be reset to ".00".
When activated and syncing via Audio Sync, the tempo received will be computed in decimals, and the decimals will be saved. Same when tapping the tempo.

Feel free to comment here regarding:

• If you think some information is missing or unclear
• How you would like this feature to be implemented (buttons, settings, how to activate, how it is done, etc.)
• Why you think this feature is a good addition to the Midronome

Hi- it was me who originally requested this feature, and when I saw this post last year, I wrote a long explanation of why this would be valuable to people, but then the whole text was lost because of an error in posting! I got so frustrated that I didn’t write it again.

Allow me to introduce myself: I work with midi a LOT. All in hardware, and I do a lot of experimentation, pushing and finding the limits of various artifacts of the midi world that I find. I love the midronone and have two.

To the business:
Why this feature could be helpful:
1) If you have instruments or software that cannot be slaved to something external, ie midronome or any other clock source, and/or those instruments don’t send midi clock, then this feature is very helpful to get machines playing at the same rate.
2) if you want an effect (like delay rate) or an accompaniment (like arpeggio) to be slightly off time, let’s say an arpeggio that is doing 8th notes just a litttttleee to slow, you can trigger right on them on the beat of the song, but clock the arpeggiator to a midronome that is a few decimals below your master clock.
Your master clock could itself be from a 2nd midronome (I bought two only for the purpose of this future feature! Although I’ve figured out interesting ways to use two together in other ways since) OR from some other source, and you’d be able to dial in the right kind of slowness or fastness to the 100th decimal place.
3) you want to have slightly off tempos from each other to achieve the phasing similar to Steve Reichs compositions for example.
4) you want to sync your beat to a cassette or vinyl recording to play on top of it
5) you want to make a piece of music that fits a very specific time length and you don’t want to or can’t use a DAW to achieve it.
This is helpful for many things but for example, wanted A)a piece of music for theater or film to finish exactly to a specific duration but not have to use time stretching or pitch to achieve it, enabling you to use all hardware and not have to have everything digitized as stems etc.
B)you want to make a piece of music done on hardware be a perfect loop for a locked groove of a record. How can you get one measure to be exactly 1.8 seconds? (Or 1.945 seconds if you’re pitching down? ) set the midronome tempo to 133.33! (Or in the other case 123.46)

Thank you Novoline for this long and thorough information!

It would be a useful feature I agree and you make something very good points

It's still in my mind to implement it eventually, maybe Firmware 4.0 or one after that, things just take time. So far no ETA or roadmap for this.

Cheers
Simon

PS: And just as a proof, here's a little peek of the Midronome code, this TODO has been there for about half a year: