Polymeter 0.0.30 adds synchronization via MIDI clock

Polymeter 0.0.30 optionally transmits MIDI clock, allowing you to synchronize your DAW or hardware sequencer with Polymeter. This was by far the most-requested new feature. The Start, Continue, Stop and Song Position messages are also sent as usual. Note that this feature must be enabled, via Options/Send MIDI Clock.

MIDI clock is old school, but it’s widely supported and works pretty well. There are some limitations, all involving the starting position. 1) Playback must start on a sixteenth note boundary; if you try to start from a position that isn’t evenly divisible by a sixteenth note, you’ll get a warning message and your starting position will be quantized to the nearest sixteenth note. 2) Playback can’t start from a negative position; this is MIDI’s limitation, not mine! 3) Similarly, playback can’t start from a position later than 16,383 sixteenth notes; again, not my fault. And 4) once playback is started, skipping forward or backward in the sequence will cause loss of synchronization; that’s because the MIDI clock specification doesn’t support position change during playback, alas.

This version adds some other handy features. For one, the ability to assign multiple modulators at once (via Insert Group on the Modulation bar’s context menu). This is especially useful with scale and chord modulation. And, the Step Values bar now supports multi-step editing; if the edited step is within a contiguous range of selected items, the track’s corresponding steps are filled with the new value. This is an easier way to set all of a track’s steps to some value, as opposed to using the Velocity pane.

Finally, this version supports assigning custom colors of tracks in the Track view. The color picker is in the main toolbar. This feature is disabled by default, but you can enable it via Options/Show Track Colors.