NAME

EuclideanRhythm - create rhythmic patterns based on the Euclidean algorithm

SYNOPSIS

use EuclideanRhythm;

my $r = EuclideanRhythm.new(slots => 16, fills => 7);

for $r.list {
    # do something if the value is True
}

DESCRIPTION

This provides an implementation of the algorithm described in http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/banff.pdf which is in turn derived from a Euclidean algorithm. Simply put it provides a simple method to distribute a certain number of "fills" (hits, beats, notes or whatever you want to call them,) as evenly as possibly among a number of "slots". The linked paper describes how, using this method, you can approximate any number of common rhythmic patterns (as well as not so common ones.)

You could of course use it for something other than generating musical rhythms: any requirement where a number of events need to be distributed over a fixed number of slots may find this useful.

METHODS

method new

method new(Int :$slots!, Int :$fills!)

The constructor has two required named arguments. The total number of slots to be filled, and the number of fills which are to be distributed into them. The number of fills should not be larger than the number of slots. The slots could be thought of as being the total number of "beats" in a measure (or bar,) but does not necessarily have to be an even number at all. Obviously if you are using more than one object to create a rhythmic structure you may want to either arrange things such that either the slots of each have some common multiple or adjust the timing of the slots such that it can resolve over time to the same length.

method once

method once()

This returns a slots sized array, filled appropriately.

method list

method list()

This is an infinite lazy list of the calculated pattern and is probably the more useful interface, obviously this is produced as fast as possible so if you are using it to generate events which you care about the timing of then you will need to take care of the timing yourself.