Tempo and BPM

Your song's BPM setting (1/Cd on the Song's GLob page) flows through to the tempo of many things, from LFO speed divisors to the delay effects; a change in BPM will never throw off any tempo-based aspects of your song.

Everything syncs up throughout the synthesis engine, pattern playback and song mode. This makes your songs sound like well-planned, evolving pieces of music. Sync-locked LFOs can help with subtle build-ups, textures and "ear candy".

Settings that govern tempo (such as LFO rates) or length (such as note lengths), often have their settings expressed in terms of steps (".St" or ".S") or, alternatively, bars (".b"). A bar is 16 steps.

Pattern length and BPM divisor

By changing the BPM speed divisor and pattern length, you can influence both the speed by which a pattern is played back, as well as change its time signature.

This allows you to have a pattern play back over a longer period than just four beats per pattern, or use different time signatures to the rest of the patterns, tracks or songs.

You can configure the BPM speed divisor ('b.div' under 1/Cd) and pattern length ('Pt.Ln' under 2/bS) on the 'Pttn' page for each of the 16 patterns for each of the 16 tracks.

Changing time signatures and pattern lengths is an incredibly useful tool to spice up track, particularly when leaving the chord track to play 4/4 . For example, try setting pattern length to 12 for a bassline or supplemental lead track. This yields a 12/16 (e.g. 6/8 time signature).

Using other values (particularly prime numbers such 11 and 13) can also yield very interesting, complex and evolving bass lines, melodies or rythm tracks when contrasted with other "regular" 4/4 (e.g. length 16) tracks in your song. You should notice that these tracks will sound complex and interesting, but never quite random. Think more IDM than Avant-garde.