Arpeggiator?

[Hernan]

Hello, I notice that a bunch of VST's come with built-in arpeggiator. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the concept...

Does anybody have a track featuring an arpeggiator that you may want to post for this old timer's enlightenment?

Thanks in advance!

The L

[xoxos]

webster's dictionary 'chord played sequentially instead of simultaneously' - don't tell me you've never herd it..

*sparks the L*

[Sascha Franck]

I wouldn't happen to have any specific tracks using arpeggiators, but I do use them frequently for "tonal grooves" or whatever. I could post a small dedicated snipplet later on, if you like.

[Beardedone]

I wouldn't happen to have any specific tracks using arpeggiators, but I do use them frequently for "tonal grooves" or whatever. I could post a small dedicated snipplet later on, if you like.

Glad to hear you use them Sascha. They are my guilty pleasure along with randomizers.

[rsmus7]

I wouldn't happen to have any specific tracks using arpeggiators, but I do use them frequently for "tonal grooves" or whatever. I could post a small dedicated snipplet later on, if you like.

Glad to hear you use them Sascha. They are my guilty pleasure along with randomizers.

my best used composition tool: the energyXT arp-comp

it´s much faster than my fingers





maybe I can post a little tune later.

[james0tucson]

Can also be handy for percussion patterns!

[rsmus7]

ok I did a little demo about what and arp can be/do.

what I did is:

I played a note and added notes in the arp-comp of energy XT.

the arpeggiator runs in a loop of 16 steps.

each time it loops I added a note, you´ll hear that

once the whole loop is done, I adjusted the velocity levels of the steps/notes played
and I have played also two and as climax three notes

in most synth the arps have not this flexibility to add note "on the fly".

they have different patterns of notes that will be played when you just play one or more notes on the keyboard,
these patterns can be edited to some extend depending on each synth.

get the demo here 0,6 mb

[pHz]

(moved from the cafe to everything else)

[Hovmod]

Just a glimpse of how the arp can do just about anything, here's a clip where one arp plays guitar and one plays drums...
Mostly, arps are fun, but sometimes they're smarter than you andmake better songs. Ask Leftfield...

[Beardedone]

I played a note and added notes in the arp-comp of energy XT.

the arpeggiator runs in a loop of 16 steps.

each time it loops I added a note, you´ll hear that

How can you add a note after each loop?

[Cabinfever]

dear kvr, i've heard a lot about 'envelopes'. can someone post one for me ?

[o'malley]

dear kvr, i've heard a lot about 'envelopes'. can someone post one for me ?

[rsmus7]

How can you add a note after each loop?

while using the mouse and the live record (on the master out) of eXT

[Cabinfever]

dear kvr, i've heard a lot about 'envelopes'. can someone post one for me ?

thanks, i think i'm beginning to understand...

these 'envelopes' all contain 'notes' that you can then send somewhere ?

[Sascha Franck]

Hm, seems I need to have a look into EXTs arpeggiator. Btw, which synth did you use, Stephan?

And Hovmod, which arpeggiator did you use for your example? I like that one.
(Would've sounded quite better with a halftime beat though )


However, here's my little take on it.
I found most "standard" arpeggios to often sound a bit "stiff" or boring. That's why I hardly ever used them much.
However, many modern softsynths offer broader ranges of dealing with arpeggios. In my case I got almost addicted to the arpeggiator found in u-he's Filterscape synth (more about the special features of that one later).

A very basic arpeggio might sound like this (please forget about the used sound for now):
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/PlainArp.mp3
Really boring. Of course I could've made it more complexed, but I found too complexed arpeggios to be somewhat limited regarding flexibility of use in chord progressions.

So, if note changing wouldn't be what I was going for, what else? Well, I often like to change pattern lengths to something being less repetitive. The example above is a simple 1-5-12-5 16th note pattern, allways starting at the downbeat. Now, I'll just add another 16th note to the pattern (another 12 = octave). This way I'm gonna end up with a 5 note pattern, of course still played over the "usual" 4note 16th grid. The result of this will be a funny little polyrhythmic thing.
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/5Arp.mp3
Still nothing special, but now it's rather like a sound issue - the pattern itself allready becomes less predictable, hence less boring. At least IMO.
I often use some odd value step numbers for arpeggiators just because of that.

What I like to do in addition (still dealing with this pretty simple pattern) is to add something like a rhythmic delay, which will again soften up the predictability.
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/5ArpDelay.mp3
Allright, there's some doubled notes (caused by the delay) which kinda make the effect obsolete. Yet, it's again softening the stiffness.

To reduce that stiff/predictable sound even more, I like to add a modulation somewhat running against or "over" the arpeggio.
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps ... layMod.mp3

Yeah well, this is all still nothing special - and most likely I wouldn't use arpeggios that way. I just don't like them to start all the way through at the same rhythmic events, so what I'm doing instead is triggering them on different rhtythmic startpoints and also use other notes but the root to have them play from, which is can be adding some nice upper chord tonesCh. In the next example I'll add some Rhodes chords and a bass to somewhat demonstrate this:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps ... ModVar.mp3
I think this is allready nicely adding some rhythmic-tonal texture.

Now, another thing I might be doing is using some different notes for the arpeggio. I allways find too complex broken chords (which is, what an arpeggio is) to be too much predictable, so you can't use them too freely anymore.
For instance, if I used a major 7 chord for the arpeggio it'd be of limited use over, say, an Amin. I could play a Cj7 and probably a Gj7 and that was it. That's why I usually avoid arpeggios containing 3rds and 7ths.
I found arpeggios build of roots, 5ths, octaves and probably 9ths to be the most useful ones. On an Amin chord I could easily use an X2 (also known as Xadd9/no3rd) on A, C, D, probably E and G.
Here's a "raw" X2 arpeggio:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/Spieluhr.mp3
This is also using the previously described "technique" of using something else but 4/8/16 notes on a 16th grid. In this case the arpeggio repeats after 10 steps. And of course it's using a bit of tempo delay.

Let's listen to this over the backing allready used, again starting it in at different positions and using different root notes for the arpeggio:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/SpieuhrVar.mp3
I think this is adding a nice texture (of course it's way too loud in the "mix"),

These are things you could probably do with any arpeggiator.
But, I'd like to demonstrate some of the possibilities the arpeggiator of Filterscape is offering, because they're really opening up for a whole new world of sounds.
*The* deal here is that you can use each step of the arpeggiator to modulate anything that can be modulated inside Filterscape. Most obvious modulation target has to be filter cutoff. Here's a clip of using the same (very simple) patch as in the first examples, just that this time the arpeggio steps are modulating the filter cutoff (up or downwards), again creating another rhythmic pattern on their own:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps ... ulator.mp3
IMO this is were the fun starts...

In Filterscape, you can go even further. The arpeggiator is polyphonic, so you can actually play chords, and instead of them being broken up, the complete chord will be arpeggiated. Of course you're better of using simple intervals, such as octaves. Could sound like this:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/ChordArp.mp3
This is a single chord played on beat 1. Again, it's getting even more fun when you don't allways place the chord on beat 1.

In FS one could go even further, in reducing almost all tonal content (lowering pitches, decays, sustains and release times) and only having the arpeggiator trigger cutoff or whatever. You can do quite some nice grooves, such as this:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/FS_Groove01.mp3
or this:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/FS_Groove02.mp3

And of course, you can just slap everything together quickly:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/arps/TooMuchArps.mp3
Everything apart from the bass and the drums kicking in towards the end is just arpeggiated Filterscape patches.
No EQs, effects, composing or mixing skills have been harmed during the making of this true masterpiece

As said, I usually only use arpeggiators to spice things up a bit. But it surely can be fun fooling around with them.