# The time side: polymeter, refused pulse, and ratio quantize

*Seed entry, October 2026. Tags: music, starweave, theory.*
*Authorship: ideas by corrow (Cole Withington); text drafted with AI assistance from his notes, pending his review.*

The Lumatone keeps microtonal pitch under the hand. Starweave works on the *time* side of the same problem.

Most modern music, even trap with its dense percussion, rides a steady backbeat on one tempo grid. Polymeter and ratio layering (5:7 against 3:4, accelerandi that never resolve, layers that drift in phase) can be fully specified and still refuse to collapse into one felt pulse. That is not the same as sloppy timing.

- **Quantize means snap-to-ratio.** In Starweave, "quantize" should snap to a declared ratio or subdivision (7 over 4 of the bar, a secondary tempo), not to a sixteenth. Otherwise the grid comes back.
- **If the drums read as noise,** separate the layers by register, timbre and envelope before deciding the ratio failed.
- **Label the grammar.** Put the tuning and the ratio in the title or description. That labeling is how listeners learn to hear it.

Annotate every piece with `time/ratio-map.json` (see the project-folder spec).