Any way to be able to tap in on 1 and 4 for a 1/8th delay when playing in 6/8?

[brand0n]

I'm not a master of tempo or timing by any stretch.

For 4/4 timing i've always tapped in the 1 and 3...which could be wrong?   For 6/8 i know I need to tap in 1/3/5 but I always find myself wanting to tap in 1 and 4.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[jbuhajla]

Depends on the note divisions you have your delay set to. If you have your delay set to 1/8 note, and you tap 1/4 notes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) then you have 1/8th note repeats. If your delay is set to 1/8th and you tap on 1, 3, etc...then your delay repeats will be 1/4 notes because you are tapping half notes. 

 

It all depends on what beat you want your delay repeats to fall on. 

 

If you want 8th note repeats in 6/8 and you tap on 1 and 4, then you need to set your delay to triplet. So for every tap, you will get three repeats. 

[brue58ski]

I'm not a master of tempo or timing by any stretch.

 

For 4/4 timing i've always tapped in the 1 and 3...which could be wrong?   For 6/8 i know I need to tap in 1/3/5 but I always find myself wanting to tap in 1 and 4.

 

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

What are you going for? In 4/4 timing, what note division are you set on. Would it be, for example a 1/4 note so your delay repeats fall on 1 & 4 as well. or are you set up on 1/8 notes so you actully would get one delay on every beat. It's all about math.

[ChubbyJerk]

I'm not a master of tempo or timing by any stretch.

 

For 4/4 timing i've always tapped in the 1 and 3...which could be wrong?   For 6/8 i know I need to tap in 1/3/5 but I always find myself wanting to tap in 1 and 4.

 

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

For tap tempo to work correctly, you have to tap the tempo. The actual tempo. The whole tempo. The beats per minute (BPM). It sounds like you're treating it like the beat of a drum, differentiating between upbeat and downbeat. I can understand why you would tap like that, but the note divisions won't be accurate if you do it like that. Give it a tap for every beat. For basic 4/4 time, tap on 1, 2, 3, and 4. That's the only way the 1/8 note subdivision of a delay will really give you 1/8 notes.

 

Your desire to tap on 1 and 4 in 6/8 actually makes sense! And it's more right than you think. It gets weird though. Typically, but certainly not always, you'll play 6/8 time as 2 beats of dotted quarter notes. That's why you're struggling to not hit on 1 and 4...because you (probably) should be hitting on 1 and 4! (If your goal is matching the sheet-music-specified BPM.) If you're looking at actual sheet music, like all official and everything, the notation at the top will tell you what the division is. For example, it will say "quarter note = 120" (except the words quarter note will probably be an actual note, not the words). That tells you that the quarter note is the beat, 88 beats per minute. Take "Can't Help Falling in Love", by Elvis. It's 6/8 time, BPM = 68, dotted quarter note gets the beat...so to tap out the BPM, you tap on 1 and 4, just like you're doing.

 

BUUUUUUUUUUT...like jb said above, or at least alluded to, tapping the 68 bpm dotted quarter note from Can't Help Falling in Love, you don't want to set it to 1/8 note after that. Because the 1/8 note division isn't actually saying "this will be an 1/8 note", it's really saying "this will be half the length of the bpm" (or "twice as fast" or however you want to think about it); it's based on the premise of the quarter note getting the beat. So an 1/8 note subdivision of a dotted quarter note does not give you what you're probably looking for, which would be the triplet division at that point.

 

I probably totally botched that explanation. Even if I got everything right, it probably wasn't clear. Sorry.

[ChubbyJerk]

What you're probably looking for in 6/8 might be easiest to achieve by tapping on 1,2,3,4,5,6 and then selecting the "quarter note" subdivision for the delay.

[HonestOpinion]

Some of this seems to be predicated on how or if the Helix is calculating multiple taps. At one point on the forum there was some speculation that it was only calculating the difference between the first two taps. Can anyone confirm whether Helix calculates tempo based on more than two taps? I don't do anything sophisticated with tapping but it only seems to me to calculate based on the first two taps. For example, two fast taps followed by a third one coming farther behind appears to me to give me the tempo of the first two taps, not an average of the three or some other calculation. I could be wrong though, have not experimented much with tap tempo beyond a couple of taps to synch up my effects usually in 1/4 time.

 

Update: When I test with one tap, wait briefly and then do two fast taps it does seem to be averaging them. Have to admit I am not sure how the tap on the Helix calculates multiple taps? Also, I know if you wait too long between taps such that you are below the slowest tempo available on the effect, it is forced to use some kind of algorithm to conform to subdivisions that make sense with its slowest tempo setting so my quick and dirty testing could be erroneous.

[tjbassoon]

The Helix has 1/8 triplet subdivision as an option for your taps. That will give you 8th note subdivision in 6/8 time if you tap on 1 and 4.