Note length values

[niahoo]

Hello,

It is unclear to me how to play quarter-notes, sixteenths, etc.

Is it possible to play triplets, sextuplets, any length ... and add silences/pauses ?

How to know that we are on 1, 2 or more bars, have a time signature of 3/4 or 7/8 ...

Thank you.

edit: if any of this is missing I may able to do it, but I need a started guide :)

[niahoo]

Ok, working on it, i figured out that when you say each item in a patter array is a beat, you acutally mean a division beat, not a bpm beat.

So, for example with 60bpm :
If my timing is 60000/60/4, it means that each item in the array will be cycled an played each 1/4 of a second. So in this example it is sixteenth notes.

I notices also that if the array contains only 3 items, with 60000/60/4 the first bpm will play items 0, 1, 2, 0.

So ... If y want to play quarter notes, but also another pattern in triplets, this cannot work. I tried something : make two players, start and stop them in parallel. And it workd. Would you say that it is the recommended approach ? Does it harm to have multiple players altogether ? Or would you divide the bpm by a common divisor, like 60000/60/36 (36 = 4 * 12, because 12 triplets notes in a bar).

Thank you

[cdauth]

beatbox.js is agnostic to time signature, it simply plays notes after each other in a certain interval.

If you want to support triplets, use the common divisor. The 36 sound good. Personally I use 240 to support even more variations of time measures.

To save memory on your pattern array, simply don't define the empty beats in it.

[niahoo]

Hey, thank you.

To save memory on your pattern array, simply don't define the empty beats in it.

What do you mean ?

const pattern = [
    ['snare'],
    [],
    [],
    ['snare'],
]

How would you write this with removed entries ? I cannot simply remove the empty arrays, or the melody changes.

[lud]

Hello,

I'm also interested on the memory-saving technique.

[cdauth]

Like this:

const pattern = [];
pattern[0] = ['snare'];
pattern[3] = ['snare'];

[lud]

Aha, so simple. Thanks a lot.