tempopositioning

Tempopositioning is a concept in music technology and generative composition that describes scheduling and describing musical events by two coordinates: tempo context and position within a metric grid. The goal is to preserve relative timing when tempo varies, by anchoring events to a tempo-aware coordinate system rather than to absolute time.

In this framework, tempo context is defined by a tempo map or pulse function that specifies the tempo over time. Position denotes an event’s location within the current bar or beat structure, expressed in beats or fractional beats. An event is represented by a tempo-position pair, which can be translated to absolute time for playback under changing tempos.

Tempopositioning is used in algorithmic composition, adaptive or interactive music, and some digital audio workstations that support procedural timing. It enables tempo-independent offsets, phase alignment, and metric modulation—situations where an event remains correctly placed despite tempo changes.

The term is not universally standardized and may be used differently across tools and authors. Critics note that it adds complexity to timing models and requires a well-defined tempo map and beat grid to avoid ambiguity.

See also: tempo map, metric modulation, phase, beat tracking, time-stretch, sequencing.