Hello forum,

I've been formulating an idea that i want to try (i have seen it done before) in that i want the user to able to play a drum beat on a midi keyboard or enter it into a step sequencer and have pure data loop the beat but then change it gradually over time algorithmically. Can anyone give me any ideas for how to do this? or has anyone tried/done this before and can give me some guidance?

One idea i have had is rating the strength of a beat musically and these strengths of beats determine probabilities in a markov chain but aside from that i'm not sure where to go with it

I hope this question isn't too vague
thanks in advance

Have a look at the RTC-library included in Pd-extended.
Here's the documentation http://www.essl.at/works/rtc.html it's for Max but should make sense.