I love using different tempo multipliers between machines, e.g. Setting the Monomachine to play at 1x and the Machinedrum to play at 3/2 or 3/4 time. I find it to be a great way to get longer, evolving sequences to play out against involved beats. I’ve been dubbing this as “calculator beats” for a little while, as I sometimes have to bust out the abacus to keep things in time.
I like to use song mode a lot, and this is probably the most troublesome element of working like this. To create fills/variations in a drum loop (as an example) I will program a 1x pattern in the MNM against a 3/2 pattern on the MD. I will then often take parts of the MD patterns and set rows to different offsets set to two beats per row, usually doubled at different points (offsets set to 0, 7, 16, 28 [or whatever], with each row set to two repetitions. Using the current track I’m working on, I’ve got the master tempo from the MNM at 87 BPM, with patterns from the MD playing at 3/2 or 3/4 time, which makes the MD play at either 130.5 or 65.25, according to my math.
So if I set my master tempo at 1x, my receiving machine at 3/2, bpm at 87, one row on the receiving machine (MD in this case) will play at 1.5x the time of the master. So if I set that row to only play two beats, and double that row, it would take 6 beats of the pattern, yes?
Not sure if this makes sense, but I’m curious if anyone else does this and has worked it out.