I was thinking about some extra features for the classic metronome, as presented in Ardour 2.0.
Ardour now supports a ‘beats per bar’ and a ‘meter denominator’. What I’d like to see is the possibility to add separate volumes for quarter notes, eighths and triplets (maybe even more, like 16th or so), just like the ultimate metronome: TAMA’s Rhythm Watch[1&2]
This can be represented with 4(+) simple horizontal sliders, created by ‘New meter’ and edited in the ‘Edit meter’ dialogs.
This way you can create a metronome on a quarter beat with an accent on the first and third count. Or mix a triplet with quarter notes. etc…
Each ‘note’ has a slightly different pitch, so that they can be easily recognized.
Exporting the clicktrack/metronome as midi would be a really cool bonus! (Ardour v3.0+) This way you can set up a neat clicktrack at home and bring it to the recording studio (where they may or may not use Ardour).
ihave one idea. i don’t know if it isn’t too complex though:
make the ‘click track’ actually accessible as a midi track in the project. by default it contains a straight forward loop of a one bar long pattern with simple quarter beats. by stretching the pattern you can change the length of the click pattern (2 bars etc). and to change the click pattern/velocity/pitch you just edit the loop in the matrix editor.
that way you can have pitch and velocity (as well as having different samples if the output is sent to a percussion midi patch) and do many different custom ticks (like for example the cymbal sound in a swing beat).
it also means you can have different click patterns in different sections (so your mega opus with multiple genre changes in the middle can have the click follow properly).
I use a YAMAHA Clickstation CLST100 when playing live which has a very similar feature to the TAMA - its useful to have those separate volume controls for each sub division particularly for triplet or off beat grooves. (harold’s idea gets my vote)