You can use a virtual midi chanel (like midi joke for example) and send (or receive) midi control messages which value increases from 1 to 64 or 1 to 128 evey 1/32 or 1/64 of the beat measure. I´ve used ableton live as a master and pd receiving [ctrlin x] (x for the control message that you know would not interfeer with your hardware setup). Then using he output of [ctrlin x] (that are increasing cyclic numbers) to whatever time porcess youre using.