Arpeggiator

The arpeggiator turns the notes you hold into a rhythmic pattern. Hold a chord and it plays through the notes one at a time, in time with the tempo. Hold a single note and it repeats that note.

It lives on the Perform page, with the other two stages that act on a note before it reaches the voices. It reads whatever is held at its input, and that is not only your keyboard: switch the Chord stage on and the arpeggiator arpeggiates the chord that one key built.

The arpeggiator is off by default. Existing presets are unchanged until you switch it on.

Controls

On switches the arpeggiator on and off. While it is off the section still shows every control, so a pattern can be set up before it is switched on.

Pattern sets the order the held notes play in. There are eight:

Up plays the notes from lowest to highest.
Down plays them from highest to lowest.
Up and Down runs up then back down, without repeating the top and bottom notes at the turn.
Down and Up runs down then back up in the same way.
As Played follows the order you pressed the keys in.
Random picks a held note at random on every step, and may pick the same note twice in a row.
Random Unique also picks at random, but plays every held note once before any note repeats.
Chord plays all the held notes together on every step, as a repeated stab.

Rate sets how fast the pattern steps, as a musical division of the beat: 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/8 triplet, 1/16 triplet, and 1/32.

Octaves sets how many octaves the pattern spans. At its lowest it uses only the notes you hold. Raised, it folds in the same notes one or more octaves higher, and the pattern shape runs across the whole span.

Gate Length sets how much of each step the note sounds for. Low settings give a short, staccato pattern with silence between the notes. At the highest setting each note lasts the full step and runs into the next.

Cycle Fade fades the loudness across one cycle of the pattern. Turned down, every step plays at full velocity. As you raise it, the first step of each cycle stays full and the later steps grow quieter, and the fade resets at the start of the next cycle. The Chord pattern has no fade.

Chance sets how likely each step is to sound. At full it plays every step, the normal behaviour. As you lower it, steps drop out at random while the timing keeps running, so the pattern stays locked to the beat but gets gaps and surprises. This is the broken, ever-changing feel of glitch and IDM patterns.

Ratchet retriggers each step several times in a row instead of once. At one it is off. Raise it and each step fires its note two, three, or four times in quick succession, which gives rolls, stutters, and buzz effects on every step.

Ratchet Fade sets how far the loudness falls across those retriggers. Turned down, every hit in the step is as loud as the last, which is what a ratchet did before this control existed. As you raise it, the first hit stays full and each one after it is quieter, until at its highest the last hit is silent.

This is what separates a roll from a stutter. A doubled note with the second hit softer reads as one note with a tail, the way a bass player's second stroke sits under the first. Left flat, the same two hits read as two separate notes. Ratchet Fade does nothing while Ratchet is at one, since there is only one hit, and the control is dimmed to say so.

Legato ties the steps into a slur. With Legato off, each step is a separate note with its own start. With it on, the steps are tied: pitch glide carries from one step to the next, and slow per-note movement keeps developing across the pattern rather than restarting on every step.

Tempo. Inside a host the arpeggiator follows the host tempo, and the tempo readout shows this. When the host gives no tempo, for example a host that exposes no transport, the readout becomes an Arp Tempo control you can drag to set the speed.

Notes

The arpeggiator plays whatever is held at the moment. Add or remove a note and the pattern rebuilds around the new set of notes.

A single held note still arpeggiates. With Octaves raised it climbs through the octaves; left at its lowest it simply repeats the note.

The step row at the bottom of the section shows the pattern running, with the current step lit, so the length and position of the sequence stay visible.

Recording the pattern

The pattern the arpeggiator plays can be sent back to your host as MIDI and recorded onto a track. The control is the MIDI Out node on the Perform page's pipeline strip, because it gates the arpeggiator, the motif player and a script's notes together. See Perform.

Trying it

Load any patch you like, hold a chord, and turn the arpeggiator on. Start with Up at 1/16 and a gate around 0.5, then raise Octaves to hear the pattern climb. Chance and Ratchet are the two controls worth reaching for once that sounds right: Chance thins the pattern out, Ratchet subdivides individual steps.