How do you make "half-notes" or notes on "half-bar"

[VexTary]

I know nothing of musical theory, so I'm probably butchering a term, but what I mean is like
We have beats on each bar, that are played on the specific tempo of the song
But how do you make notes that are like "half a bar"?
I wanna make a specific kick drum beat, but I'm unable to do it if I'm unable to make that beat without changing the tempo, and changing the tempo would mess up the entire song, so that's out of question. I tried fiddling around, but I can't seem to find any way to do it.

Thanks for the attention!

[◢ k r i s ◤]

I think the phrase you are looking for is time-signatures, which you can adjust by playing with the buttons (minus, plus, half, 2x) and slider at the bottom of the Clip Editor [but does assume you know what you're doing as odd time-signatures aren't intuitive and neither is Rytmik's interface to some users]. By default, a clip will provide a single bar at 4/4 time at 120 BPM, but you can extend the clip up to 4 bars using those buttons below. Because of the design, Rytmik only displays one bar at a time, so you use the slider to select different bars if you have multiple. There was a very verbose thread on time signatures in Rytmik Ultimate some years ago that might interest you if that's what you meant. Looking back on that thread, Rytmik Studio really makes odd time-signatures a lot easier to manage than it was back in Rytmik Ultimate. It's still a bit tedious and nuanced, but at least we can place multiple bars per clip now and that dramatically helps keep things organized. As a reminder, Rytmik always follow the tempo and clip length of the top-most clip in the Song Editor rows. This means if you make a drum beat that is 3/4 time signature and leave it at the top, Rytmik will abruptly interrupt all the clips below it if you instead made those other clips the default 4/4 time signature.

On the chance I'm mistaken and you really just want to adjust the length of a note, you need to play with the ADSR parameters (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) in the bottom-right of the Song Editor after you've selected the FX Instrument tab in top-right. To get the desired results and adjust those per note, use the Note Parameter Patterns in the Clip Editor along the left-side (where, by default, Pattern A always defaults to Volume of each note. You can have up to 4 parameters assigned to the note patterns per channel/instrument - so to be economical you might want to set up your ADSR so you can simply adjust the Sustain parameter per note to the desired length you want while making your Attack, Decay and Release work for your particular sample regardless of sustain length (which might not be the default settings for all samples provided so adjust as needed). I'm doubtful this is really what you want though since you can't extend a drum or percussion note sample (without getting abstract and experimental) and you specifically mentioned you were working with beats here. You can probably shorten something like a long, open hi-hat to sound like a closed hi-hat on some notes, but at that point you might want to look at the VARI mode which allows for different samples to be used within a single channel on different notes.

edit: I actually took the time to look up half-notes on Wikipedia[en.wikipedia.org] and now I think the ADSR solution is more what you were looking for after all - not the time-signatures.

But, if it sounds like none of this is really what you're asking for, then I apologize. Do you have some reference material we could look at that helps demonstrate what you are trying to achieve? That might help me figure out what you want to do.

[VexTary]

Originally posted by ◢ k r i s ◤:

I think the phrase you are looking for is time-signatures, which you can adjust by playing with the buttons (minus, plus, half, 2x) and slider at the bottom of the Clip Editor [but does assume you know what you're doing as odd time-signatures aren't intuitive and neither is Rytmik's interface to some users]. By default, a clip will provide a single bar at 4/4 time at 120 BPM, but you can extend the clip up to 4 bars using those buttons below. Because of the design, Rytmik only displays one bar at a time, so you use the slider to select different bars if you have multiple. There was a very verbose thread on time signatures in Rytmik Ultimate some years ago that might interest you if that's what you meant. Looking back on that thread, Rytmik Studio really makes odd time-signatures a lot easier to manage than it was back in Rytmik Ultimate. It's still a bit tedious and nuanced, but at least we can place multiple bars per clip now and that dramatically helps keep things organized. As a reminder, Rytmik always follow the tempo and clip length of the top-most clip in the Song Editor rows. This means if you make a drum beat that is 3/4 time signature and leave it at the top, Rytmik will abruptly interrupt all the clips below it if you instead made those other clips the default 4/4 time signature.

On the chance I'm mistaken and you really just want to adjust the length of a note, you need to play with the ADSR parameters (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) in the bottom-right of the Song Editor after you've selected the FX Instrument tab in top-right. To get the desired results and adjust those per note, use the Note Parameter Patterns in the Clip Editor along the left-side (where, by default, Pattern A always defaults to Volume of each note. You can have up to 4 parameters assigned to the note patterns per channel/instrument - so to be economical you might want to set up your ADSR so you can simply adjust the Sustain parameter per note to the desired length you want while making your Attack, Decay and Release work for your particular sample regardless of sustain length (which might not be the default settings for all samples provided so adjust as needed). I'm doubtful this is really what you want though since you can't extend a drum or percussion note sample (without getting abstract and experimental) and you specifically mentioned you were working with beats here. You can probably shorten something like a long, open hi-hat to sound like a closed hi-hat on some notes, but at that point you might want to look at the VARI mode which allows for different samples to be used within a single channel on different notes.

edit: I actually took the time to look up half-notes on Wikipedia[en.wikipedia.org] and now I think the ADSR solution is more what you were looking for after all - not the time-signatures.

But, if it sounds like none of this is really what you're asking for, then I apologize. Do you have some reference material we could look at that helps demonstrate what you are trying to achieve? That might help me figure out what you want to do. :lunar2019piginablanket:

Now that's what I would call a fantasticf response. I'll definitely be trying out all the stuff you just teached me! haha.

No need to apologize at all! I wasn't really clear with my question, considering I know 0 of music theory and all the technical names of stuff. I'm just starting out! But to give you an idea, I was trying to replicate a similar beat like on that song below.

On a side note, sorry if that sounds too forward, but would you mind if I added you on Steam? I promise not to bother you too much, it's just for a few questions I have regarding the software and stuff! It's totally fine if you're not up to it too. ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHn5Fv_aLKE

[◢ k r i s ◤]

That sounded like an odd-time signature at first, because the drum breaks have this delayed pause thing which throws off the momentum to me - but if you actually do a one-two-three-four count in your head with the snare always hitting when you say two and four, the whole song actually is in 4/4 time afterall.

Sure, just sent a friend request. I used to leave Steam running 24/7, but that's been inconvenient for me lately so instead it might be more practical to just message me if I'm offline and wait for Steam to show me those messages when I log back in.