what exactly is an arpeggiator good for???

[Cold Truth]

i see all these features on various modules and keyboards, including my own, most of which i have never touched.... i have had , in the last year, a roland xp 80, triton le, xp 80, and now the motif rack.... they all have arpgiators that are supposed to be great, but what are they good for? theyre just preset patterns from what i have seen, and i guess you can program youre own... but how would i actually use this on a beat?????????

 

[bigdmakintrax]

man look let me tell that arpeggiator is ok to use but you have to learn how to use it.....you don't always use it at the same speed as your pattern and you don't press it for a long time just to accent.....and also make sure you don't have big range set to play only about 2 or 3 notes but depends on how you want to use it....on the motif I don't really like too many of the presets....you have to make your own....if you know how to play a little its easy but on the Motif it is a pain in the ass to program the only arpeggiator I liked is on the MP7, it was the most user friendly, most of the time on boards they are catering to tekno and electronic user with the patterns so it might not be completely for hip hop......

 

[vitaminman]

Hey,

A little known secret...

If you use an arpeggiator on a drum kit, you can sometimes get some really interesting drum patterns that you wouldn't normally think of programming yourself. That's the beauty of an arpeggiator: if you use it as a tool for sound creation, you can sometimes surprise yourself.

What I've done in the past when I'm stuck for programming drums is to simply dial up a drum kit on one of my synths, hit some keys on my controller with the arp turned on, and record the notes into Cubase. I just let it record while I change the notes, then after a few minutes I go back and play everything back while either pitching the notes up or down (to trigger different sounds) or changing the drum kits.

What usually happens is that I find there are one or two little passages of drums which sound really cool, I then copy the parts that I like into a separate track and use that to start building the rest of the song.

Take care,

Nick

 

[JP hardboiled]

lots of cats into computer music and dance music in general use much arpegiation...it goes well with that type of music.