Livecoding edit cadence should be anchored to the musical grid, not wall-clock time

Saves should be timed to cycle and phrase boundaries, not at arbitrary wall-clock intervals. Micro/param edits should arrive at most once every 2-4 cycles; patch and voice edits once every 4-16 cycles (a phrase), to give ideas time to be heard before the next layer. Section rewrites land only every 16-64 cycles at section boundaries. Saving every cycle reads as nervous or glitchy unless glitch is the intended aesthetic. A stable, good groove with no edits in a phrase is a legitimate and often correct choice.

Examples

Holding a good bass groove for 8 cycles before adding a melodic voice gives the audience time to orient. Saving every cycle to tweak a filter reads as restless.

Assessment

State the recommended edit frequency (in cycles) for each of the four diff-size tiers, and explain what ‘no edit this phrase’ communicates to the audience.