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Exploring polyrhythms, polymeters, and polytempi with the universal grid sequencer framework

Published: 16 September 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Polyrhythms, Polymeters, and Polytempo are compositional techniques that describe pulses which are desynchronous between two or more sequences of music. Digital systems permit the sequencing of notes to a near-infinite degree of resolution, permitting an exponential number of complex rhythmic attributes in the music. Exploring such techniques within existing popular music sequencing software and notations can be challenging to generally work with and notate effectively. Step sequencers provide a simple and effective interface for exploring any arbitrary division of time into an even number of steps, with such interfaces easily expressible on grid based music controllers.
The paper therefore has two differing but related outputs. Firstly, to demonstrate a framework for working with multiple physical grid controllers forming a larger unified grid, and provide a consolidated set of tools for programming music instruments for it. Secondly, to demonstrate how such a system provides a low-entry threshold for exploring Polyrhytms, Polymeters and Polytempo relationships using desynchronised step sequencers.

References

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Willi Apel. 2003. The Harvard dictionary of music (4th ed.). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Christopher Dobrian. 2012. Techniques for Polytemporal Composition. In Proceedings of Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society's 2012 Annual Conference (KEAM-SAC2012). Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society, Seoul, Korea, 1--8.
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Alan Dorin. 2002. LiquiPrism: Generating polyrhythms with cellular automata. In Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Auditory Display. Georgia Institute of Technology, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute, Kyoto, Japan, 447 -- 451.
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Jared Dunne. 2007. Monome 40h Multi-Purpose Hardware Controller.
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Martim Galvao. 2014. Metric Interplay: A Case Study In Polymeter, Polyrhythm, And Polytempo. Ph.D. Dissertation. UC Irvine.
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Dave Hodder. 2018. Launchpad Pro. Technical Report. Focusrite. https://github.com/dvhdr/launchpad-pro
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Viljo Malmberg et al. 2010. Iris: A circular polyrhythmic music sequencer. Master's thesis. Aalto University.
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Monome. 2020. Grid. Technical Report. Monome. https://monome.org/docs/grid/
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Chris Nash. 2014. Manhattan: End-user programming for music. In Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. NIME, Goldsmiths, University of London, 221--226.
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Nathan Renney and Benedict R Gaster. 2019. Digital Expression and Representation of Rhythm. In Proceedings of the 14th International Audio Mostly Conference: A Journey in Sound. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Nottingham United Kingdom, 9--16.
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Richard Vogl and Peter Knees. 2017. An intelligent drum machine for electronic dance music production and performance. In 17th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. NIME, Copenhagen, Denmark, 251--256.
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cover image ACM Other conferences
AM '20: Proceedings of the 15th International Audio Mostly Conference
September 2020
281 pages
ISBN:9781450375634
DOI:10.1145/3411109
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 September 2020

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Author Tags

  1. grid controllers
  2. polymeter
  3. polyrhythm
  4. polytempo

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  • Research-article

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AM'20
AM'20: Audio Mostly 2020
September 15 - 17, 2020
Graz, Austria

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AM '20 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 47 submissions, 62%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 177 of 275 submissions, 64%

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