Minecraft: 20 Hz redstone timing precision

Channel:

EllipticGeometry

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255

Published on March 22, 2012 3:13:42 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEdyI5coFys

Game:

Counter-Strike: Source (2004)

Duration: 1:27

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Update: I have a better solution where you only have to press a button: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdXQeSsm2Ns

It's commonly thought that redstone runs at 10 Hz. In reality, it runs at 20 Hz, just taking two ticks to do just about everything. If you run two separate circuits, you can start one at an offset of 1/20 s from the other, giving you alternating redstone ticks that, together, run at 20 Hz. Dependent operations won't be faster, but you can use the offset for more precise timing. Should be very useful when making songs using note blocks. You can have very fast notes, or just better timing with less distorted tuplets and such.

Edit: Haha. Turns out this stuff is more or less known, although it's far from ubiquitous. I should stop living under a rock. There are some piston tricks to run what they call a "0.5-tick" clock. I'll be looking into that. I have basically a sequence of ever more involved starters. With the trick the starter might be simplified to simply pushing a button. But the starter/split output concept will remain. And it makes this invention of mine look even clunkier.

My technique works like this:
- Make two 1-clocks.
- Add four note blocks, one at each edge, and make them something that helps you recognize their order. This step isn't required, but my ears are better at discerning precise timing than my eyes. Your mileage may vary.
- Start one clock.
- Start the other clock. If it doesn't run at an offset, kill it and start it again until it does. Then make sure it runs in the right gap. If doesn't, try again. Alternatively, you can fix this by inserting an extra repeater downstream, but in the plan I used in this video I went with retrying. Either way, it started in the right gap the first time it ran at an offset, so in this instance it was a moot point.
- At this point you already have something going at 20 Hz.
- It's helpful to move the signals to longer chains of repeaters. It helps the timing later on. I happened to use pistons to send the pulses into the chains. The redstone signal driving the pistons is there for a fifth of a second.
- The longer chains make it easy to see your pulses. One should appear to be half a block ahead of the other. If the wrong one is in the lead, your 1-clock was in the wrong gap; kill all clocks except the first one and start over. It's also possible they'll run in phase due to the timing of the pistons. If that is the case, stop only the chain clocks and try to replicate the 1-clocks again.
- If your pulses are in the wrong order, this is your last chance. You can add an extra repeater downstream from the signal in the lead to make it trail the other signal.
- You can see where this is going. You can add a song past the end, split so one clock handles 'even' times and the other handles 'odd' times.
- You can now let the two pulses out using a coarsely-timed gate. Open it momentarily when the pulses approach, and you'll have the two pulses you wanted at the output!

*************

The cycles in my video attempt to replicate the 'basic' drum pattern of the deepest part of a song called Rosetta Stoned by Tool. Even if you don't like their music, you must admit that their drummer, Danny Carey, is a beast! This is a polyrhythm with cycles of 3, 4, 5, and 12 sixteenth notes, only matching up again after 60. The complete pattern to the best of my knowledge:

Right hand:
110000000000110000000000110000000000110000000000110000000000
000000110000000000110000000000110000000000110000000000110000
000110000110000110000110000110000110000110000110000110000110

Left hand:
101101100001101101100001101101100001101101100001101101100001
000000001000000000001000000000001000000000001000000000001000

Right foot:
101001010010100101001010010100101001010010100101001010010100

Left foot:
100010001000100010001000100010001000100010001000100010001000

These are straight sixteenths, but I used the split clock to make those sixteenths 3/20 of a second. 4/20 (equivalent: two repeaters) is way too slow. 2/20 (one repeater) is a bit fast. 3/20 is too slow again, but overall it sounds best to me. Yes, I create something with tons of possibilities, and I only use it to adjust the tempo. :-)

I took advantage of the cycles when programming the pattern into note blocks (one reason for picking this). The left foot has its own tiny cycle of 12/20 s. The right foot has a natural cycle length of 15/20 s, which can't be handled by one clock. Instead, each clock gets a cycle of 30/20 s, where one handles the hits at 0/20 s and 6/20 s, and the other handles 15/20 s and 21/20 s. The hands are split across two cycles of 36/20 s.

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