I'm a programmer and I'm developing some software for use in combination with music. Part of the software will include a sequencer that can show / start certain tasks that match the music's tempo.
I also performed as a DJ for several years, but all of the music I played always contained the most common (in my world) beat: counting 1, 2, 3, 4 and starting over again, varying in BPM from anywhere from 80 through 200.
Because I want to make the software I'm writing as flexible as possible, I'm trying to figure out what I should reasonably support, to include as much as possible.
When working with simple 4-beat songs, the math is simple. If you want a pulse between the 1 and 2 (for example), you end up with a 1/8th pulse, or a 1/16th if we go even further. How does this translate to other formats?
I'm sorry if the question is unclear as I've never had any music theory, so I don't know the right place to start to ask the question.
For displaying purposes, software like Rekordbox shows timings such as this: 1.1
, or 36.3
, where the first number translates to the 'n-th time you counted 1, 2, 3, 4' (which is named?) and the second number to the beat within that same measurement. How would this work with a non-4-beat scheme?