Polytempo: Tools for Synchronising Musicians in Simultaneous Parallel Tempos

⟶ This documentation is work-in-progress and several parts may still be incomplete.

PolytempoNetwork is an application to synchronise musicians. It displays the music on screen and conveys the musical tempo to the player either visually by an animation that resembles the gestures of a conductor, or acoustically by a click track.

Several computers running this software can be connected in a network. This allows for the synchronisation of ensemble music and opens up possibilities for complex tempo structures as well as the distribution of musicians in the performing space.

PolytempoComposer is an application to devise temporal polyphonies. It provides a GUI for the manipulation of complex polytemporal structures and the facility to audition the tempo progressions.

Tempo structures constructed in PolytempoComposer can be exported to be read by PolytempoNetwork.

PolytempoNetwork and PolytempoComposer have been developed at the Zurich University of the Arts as part of the Polytempo research project.