please bear with me as I'm not a mathematician but seeking something quite specific for use in determining sequences for creating generative rhythms in music (I can read & understand music). What I want is probably actually quite basic but I'm not sure how to achieve it.
A simple example would be working in 4/4 (i.e. 4 quarter note beats per bar) with 3 voices and having one voice trigger every bar, one every bar and a half and one every two bars. They would all line up again after 6 bars. So far so simple.
Obviously I can scale this up and use divisors such as 2,3,5 bars to create a sequence which is 30 bars long with 3 voices, but these still give rise to very regular and uninteresting rhythms.
So the question is, how do I start to take advantage of all the beats and subdivisions available to create more complex and interesting rhythms (1/16, 1/8 1/4, 1/2 etc, as well as dotted notes i.e. 1.5 beats)?
Essentially I know nothing about this stuff so I'd like to understand the terminology and anything I can reference (tables etc) that would be useful in trying this stuff out.
Would be good to keep it simple initially (i.e. not getting into 6/8 9/8 etc yet...). Thanks for any thoughts, I'll do my best to understand!