If you’ve spent any time with an Elektron Octatrack, Digitakt, Digitone, Syntakt, Analog 4 or Analog Rytm you’ve either stumbled upon or intentionally used polymeter’s at some point.
A polymeter is where two or more tracks have a different number of steps (or ‘trigs’ in Elektron parlance) and which cycle independently of one another (if pattern SCALE MODE is set to PER TRACK).
The pattern will only repeat smoothly when each individual track length reaches the number which all track lengths have in common; the Least Common Multiple or LCM.
You can set each pattern to loop infinitely by setting its MASTER LENGTH to INF, but this has a draw back: the next/cued pattern will never have an opportunity to start and if you want to switch seamlessly to your next pattern knowing the LCM will come in very handy.
Once you begin using track TEMPO MULTIPLIER’s, calculating the LCM gets increasingly difficult (and let’s face it, you bought an Octatrack to have fun making music, not doing maths). Which is why this calculator was created to assist in working out each pattern’s LCM.
Select the number of TRIGS for each track and the MULTIPLIER in use, then click the “calculate” button. Dial that number into the pattern MASTER LENGTH and you’re golden…
Finally, there is the option to set each track to “OFF” when not in use so it will be ignored by the calculator, plus (for machines that support it) an option to toggle MIDI tracks into use.
Thanks to avantronica, sezare56, JSZ for their suggestions, testing & support. Ref: Elektronauts Community Forum
Created by zYklen for the Elektron community, if you found this useful please consider supporting my music.