[MUSIC] So in this video we're going to be creating an arpeggiated texture. I like the idea of kind of starting my compositional process with an arpeggiator because so much kind of beautiful rhythmic patterns and melodic structures just appear in this. And I find that I often end up with things I wouldn't have done before so I love it as a kind of generator. And I also just love the idea that sound and synthesis can be the kind of inspiration for a song. That's something that's totally unique to electronic music. And so, let's check out how we can use arpeggiators over in Strobe. The first thing I like to do is set my amp envelope just right. Similar to the piano patch that we did, I like to use a damped percussive envelope. So I'll reduce the stain all the way down and get my decay parameter pretty high, and then bring release up a little bit. The other thing I want to do is just get my timbre kind of situated to get a good sound to go with. And you know me by now, I like to start with that sine wave, real simple sound and kind of build up a more complex timbre later. But right now I'm going to go with sine wave as my main tone and then just bring square wave in an octave lower, just a little bit and then bring my filter down. [MUSIC] Overall level up a bit here. [MUSIC] That's going to be a good starting point. I'd like the notes to be able to overlap a little bit so I'll go to voices and I want to bring that up to 4. So now I do want to get the filter envelope moving a little bit, give it a little bit of character to this. So I'm going to apply modulation envelope to cutoff frequency quite a bit, bring my cut off frequency down a bit and set the mod envelope to be similar to the amp envelope a damp percussive. In fact, I'll just kind of copy those settings with just a little less, let's see how this sounds [MUSIC] That'll be a good starting point for now, but we'll play as we go. All right, so now the role of the arpeggiator is that you hold the chord and it kind of moves through those notes one by one, and it will do so in time with your music which is great. I think the challenge with it is, making it so it doesn't sound so elementary. And let's have a look at the arpeggiator. We click the arpeggiator button. You want to make sure that you turn it on. because there's a power button right there. The arpeggiator will only function when the input button right here is engaged. When it's not engaged you'll just hear the chord. [MUSIC] If it's engaged. [MUSIC] We'll start here and move through those notes. Now there's a great hold function here, which I really like. I'll turn that on and now I can play a chord. [MUSIC] And it'll continue on, I'm going to play another chord. We'll switch to the new chord. [MUSIC] All right. Now I like that function because then I can start manipulating other parameters in the synth while that's kind of holding out. First we have the rate which is how fast it's going to go through those notes. If I set a lower rate like a quarter note. Then it's going to play very slowly through them. [MUSIC] We'll just let that go. Now, one of my favorite aspects of this is the gate time, which is going to control how long each of those individual notes is. If I increase that. [MUSIC] If I shorten that down we'll get, [MUSIC] Those little blips, right? And that's actually a really nice one to automate, to have change over time, maybe even have modular control or something. I think the challenge is making it so it doesn't sound like it's just going up through a simple cord, right? And so get a little more gate time here, and we have different modes that this can be in. Forward, we'll go up, and then forward, reverse, go up and then back down. Again, it's sounds a little elementary still. [MUSIC] Random. [MUSIC] It's just going to play random notes. That can be okay, but often, it's just too random, right? It doesn't really work, and it's not repeatable in my music. My favorite setting is actually Manual. Which is actually really interesting. It says Manual, and Manual is actually referring to the steps here at the top of the step sequencer. Now, I'm going to set my sequencer length only to be four. Right here. Now if I play four notes. [MUSIC] And I turn on my arpeggiator. [MUSIC] Just playing that same bottom note over and over again. And I'm going to turn on hold. [MUSIC] Right, just playing that bottom note. But if I start changing these. [MUSIC] I can choose what gets played. Right, so with the longer sequence length. [MUSIC] Maybe eight? And a fast array. [MUSIC] And with more notes [MUSIC] You can see we can get much more complex and interesting patterns by how we manipulate this now. And so some things I like to do with arpeggiator is one is just have it set mostly to a single note and then come up and just jump to other notes here and there. Let's try this. So I don't think it'll work. And I also like to think carefully about how many notes I'm playing on the keyboard and what those notes are. [MUSIC] Right, so that's the chord I'm going to play and let's turn this on. [MUSIC] Now, we get a nice kind of interesting pattern out of this right. And then, with that playing we can start manipulating things like gate time. [MUSIC] It's kind of interesting. And if we want to get up into the swing of the pattern we could. [MUSIC] And I find just a little bit can kind of be nice at times. Now, I'd like to try to take this idea one little step further, and that's engaging with TransMod just a little bit. And I'm going to come up to TransMod, and I'm going to use the mono StepSeq+ modulator and that's going to use this variation as a modulation source. And I'm just going to have that modulate cutoff frequency. Let's go over to the synth, turn cutoff frequency way down and have that step sequence or modulate cutoff frequency. And we can even see that it's already jumping around. Let's hear it. [MUSIC] Maybe also have it do resonance a little bit. [MUSIC] Now we get a nice kind of pattern in there. You can even have it bring in noise. [MUSIC] Maybe bring out the sine wave and. [MUSIC] Right? Try a different chord maybe. [MUSIC] Maybe go back to my arpeggiator and play with gate time. [MUSIC] Work with different. [MUSIC] Now one thing you can do, which is even, also fun, is then start modulating sequence length, so that loops become, not exactly always the same loop over and over. I think there's a lot of ways that this can be extended, and I hope you start taking all the stuff that we've done already in the patches, and apply them here as well. There's lots of room to grow, and I think these techniques will help you get there. [MUSIC]
