3/4 Music Hack (also works for 5/4, 7/8, etc)
By default, music patterns in PICO-8 are 32 notes long. This makes writing music in time signatures other than 4/4 quite difficult. So writing in 3/4 can be quite difficult as 3 doesn't go evenly into 32.
Luckily, we can use the loop function in the sfx editor to cut 32 notes down to 24.
e.g.
but this will loop the first 8 notes again if we play it by itself.
The trick is to use a "empty master" pattern set at so that it plays its 32 empty notes in the time that our 24 actual notes play. Doing some maths, this just requires an empty pattern of SPD 12.
i.e.