BlueARP VST Arpeggiator development - let's discuss! (Apple M1 ready, 4K)

[graywolf2004]

This might be answered somewhere in the thread but a search keywords tie and loop doesn't yield any results.

I'm wondering how to make the last note and the first note tie when it loops? It seems that when the steps end... or while looping, the tie notes aren't respected.

Anyway around this?

It's a bug. Halfway fixed in v2.11
By 'halfway' I mean it will work fine when a single program looped. If you have a chain, it won't look forward into the next step of the chain (doing this requires a lot of changes in core logic, now I don't want to sacrifice stability for this issue).
With a single program - I tried to mark all steps as 'Tie' - worked fine.

[graywolf2004]

...I was thinking maybe just a checkbox 'restart chain when chain changes' would be good - this way you could have gaps in your chords if you wanted without trouble. During performance you can then decide whether turning your 'chain' knob keeps continuity between various 'compatible' chains (which work seamlessly with one another) or just moves to the new chain and starts the arp again.

What do you think?

In "restart on key" and "restart on 1st key" in v2.11 it works right this way - switching the chain always starts new chain from the beginning, I tested it and saw it's the most intuitive and logical way.
Only in "restart on beat" it's always aligned to host song position.

[graywolf2004]

Update: BlueARP v2.11
Windows
http://www.graywolf2004.net/files/2/Blu ... _v2.11.zip
OSX
http://www.graywolf2004.net/files/2/Blu ... _v2.11.zip

Changes:
Only bugfixes for program chains - timing issues, quantization, etc. There are many small fixes - don't remember all.
I spent around 4 hours testing & fixing bugs with long chains, having various sync and length values, kind of a stress test. Finally it seems to work as designed.

Pay attention to 'chain quantize' parameter. Most comfortable setting is 1/4 (1/4 bar = 1 beat), it means if you switch the chain a little beforehead it will be actually switched strictly at the new beat.
Chain logic also depends on "restart on" setting:
1. "beat" - chain\program step position is always aligned to host song position
2. "key" - each new chord (after a pause) resrarts the chain. When you switch to another chain, new chain starts from the beginning
3. "1st key" - the same as "key", but only the 1st key\chord starts the chain, further pauses between chords don't affect timing.

What I don't like about this chains stuff - it becomes harder and harder to describe the concepts and it's slowly becoming a 'rocket science'. But sonically it's cool, I played a lot myself with it and it really adds a lot to live possibilities. Anyway, will try to reflect this stuff in the manual, I didn't update it for a long time.

[graywolf2004]

Synth bass cover with BlueARP, showing advanced usage of program chains
Especially I like this trick when programs with different 'sync' values are chained (look at 0:15 to see what I mean).

[glinkot]

Fantastic Oleg! I'll be looking forward to trying this! Sounds very well thought out indeed.

The cover was good fun. How did you fit the band in your bedroom like that? there were a couple of spots where in the original bass riff there was swing where the gap between certain notes was longer or shorter. Maybe the step speed (1/16 or whatever) could be by note at some point, so you can adjust this. The 1/16 'global' setting would be the default for the program and you'd only override it on notes you want to adjust. This would also allow doubles/ triplets while maintaining ability to control each note in that triplet. As opposed to just marking one 'step' as a triplet step like thesys does, then they would all be the same note.

I'll give the chain changes a crack this week!

[graywolf2004]

Fantastic Oleg! I'll be looking forward to trying this! Sounds very well thought out indeed.

The cover was good fun. How did you fit the band in your bedroom like that? there were a couple of spots where in the original bass riff there was swing where the gap between certain notes was longer or shorter. Maybe the step speed (1/16 or whatever) could be by note at some point, so you can adjust this. The 1/16 'global' setting would be the default for the program and you'd only override it on notes you want to adjust. This would also allow doubles/ triplets while maintaining ability to control each note in that triplet. As opposed to just marking one 'step' as a triplet step like thesys does, then they would all be the same note.

I'll give the chain changes a crack this week!

Thanks! Aligning original track to the tempo was tricky, I had to do several fine adjustments to the pitch and bpm. Then, since I set restart on beat, it's always stays linked to the beat.
Making single steps dotted will make the whole timing concept nightmare, at least from development prospective. Its already quite tricky, Im trying to keep it as simple as possible. Anyway, I still need to experiment more with chains. Making this cover was both fun and finding/fixing a lot of bugs )

[glinkot]

The chains are looking good to me.

I was playing with a little tool called 'sundog scale' yesterday which isn't an arp as such but is in interesting idea. I did notice it had lots of interesting scales in the full version at least (300). This got me thinking- could we have a little .txt file bluearp reads for the scales, so the community can add more in?

I should have more of a look at the scale feature, I figure if you have multiple instances of bluearp they should be set to the same scale.

[falkelab]

Using 2.11 in Studio One Professional 2.6.5 and Mac OS X 10.10.1. All the gorgeous arping is working fine here but I have some problems with parts of the GUI disappearing suddenly. Then I have to alt-tab to some other app and then back again and all is fine again. Another way is to close the VST GUI and open it again.

I have tried some of the different skins with the same problem and this only affects BlueArp and no other app or VST in my system.
Thanks for a otherwise great plug!

[graywolf2004]

The chains are looking good to me.

I was playing with a little tool called 'sundog scale' yesterday which isn't an arp as such but is in interesting idea. I did notice it had lots of interesting scales in the full version at least (300). This got me thinking- could we have a little .txt file bluearp reads for the scales, so the community can add more in?

I should have more of a look at the scale feature, I figure if you have multiple instances of bluearp they should be set to the same scale.

An interesting app, thanks for sharing. I'll check it, may be some interesting ideas in there. Scales are quite basic in bluearp, I know. I didn't yet 'polish' them as I'm doing this with chains. The main thing is 'fitting notes to scale' algorithm, if you want it to be smarter than simple "pick up next lower or upper note". Maybe it's better to introduce "scale step" transposition instead of semitones. But I'll keep 'user scales' thing in mind when I come to refine scales in bluearp.

[graywolf2004]

Using 2.11 in Studio One Professional 2.6.5 and Mac OS X 10.10.1. All the gorgeous arping is working fine here but I have some problems with parts of the GUI disappearing suddenly. Then I have to alt-tab to some other app and then back again and all is fine again. Another way is to close the VST GUI and open it again...

I know about this bug, but I hoped I fixed it. Did you notice any pattern to it? (in which situations it happens more likely) Any details may help me, cause I already spent hours figthting this issue, still no luck...

[graywolf2004]

All.

I wonder if any of you got V-Machine?

I got one recently - they are quite cheap nowadays and the idea of having bluearp + some synth in a box was too attractive to me.
I thought of V-Machine couple of years ago and even asked them a question if one can use vst arpeggiators incide v-machine, they responded it's possible and gave some explanations.
After checking v-machine thread at kvr (169 pages!) I got the idea it's a can with worms, but I decided to give it a try anyway.

I was able to run BlueARP inside v-machine very quickly, but I noticed program switching is damn slow - it freezes for 5-10 seconds each time. After several hours of debugging I got it - when bluearp runs inside V-Machine, it doesn't know this thing has no GUI - and it performs all drawing activities. This is what causes delays on switching programs. So by checking plugin path and host name bluearp checks "Am I inside V-Machine"? If yes, it turns off all GUI activities.
By the way I cleaned up a lot of stuff in my code which is good also.

I wasn't impressed with CPU power at all (I expected that), but I found that Synth1 is extremly light even on this weak CPU! I could run bluearp + 8 voices of Synth1 (with internal effects) flawlessly! I'm planning to make youtube video on this.

Too bad SMPro stopped developing v-machine concept. With CPU upgrade could be really great product.
And too bad it has only MIDI IN, no MIDI OUT, otherwise I could use it to arpeggiate my hardware synths.

[phreaque]

Privet Oleg
Hope you're doing well.

I'm into doing similar project, but with little windows tablet and will give you a feedback, I was not thinking at all about V-Machine based on reviews I collected from members here, most of them told it is not a powerful machine to handle some medium level work...

But, I was willing to hide this suggestion unfortunately you opened that door to it...
What do you think about IOS version of BlueARP ?

Have a nice time meister

[Ride57]

Thank you. I can't wait to try this out.

[stoney]

BlueARP 2.11 , windows7, energyxt2,

Bluearp does not respond to program change, my other vst's all respond. I've read earlier in this post that it should work. How can I get this to work?

Thanks

[stoney]

Ok. Seems anything version 2 doesn't respond to program change messages. It works for version 1 bluearps though.