From the course: Logic Pro X: MIDI Plug-Ins and Effects

Basic arpeggiator functions - Logic Pro Tutorial

From the course: Logic Pro X: MIDI Plug-Ins and Effects

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Basic arpeggiator functions

- [Instructor] All right. So the midi effect that we're going to start with is the arpeggiator. I'm going to go over to the midi effects handle here and I'm going to instantiate the arpeggiator there. Now just keep in mind, midi effects are basically taking incoming midi information, tweaking it so changing it, doing whatever we set it up to do really and then passing that midi information along to the software instrument. So here's what we're dealing with. I have retro synth going right now by the way one of my favorites, we can get a little preset going here like a nice retro strings kind of sound and let's just listen to what we have to start with. (instrumental music) Okay and for the arpeggiator I'm going to try to pick something that has a little bit more pluck. (instrumental music) Okay that should be cool. Maybe I'll tighten up some of these envelopes a little bit. (instrumental music) Okay that's great. Now let's turn on the arpeggiator. This is based on a function that sort of started to pop up in older analog synthesizers and it has kind of been brought forward because it has kind of a very interesting function. You can get really classic types of musical figures out of an arpeggiator but they're also very creative ways that you can use an arpegiattor. So in its most basic form, the arpeggiator is going to take the incoming midi information and the way I have it set now and the way it comes by default is it's going to take all of the incoming midi notes if I play a chord and split them out and play them one by one at a rate that's set over here. So right now its 16th notes, let me play a chord. (instrumental music) So right now I'm playing four chords and it's just going up through them. (instrumental music) Okay I can also change the cycle. I'm going to hold down only three notes now. (instrumental music) I know some of you are already getting ideas from this. It's a really cool, very evocative tool. Now you might be wondering, well, that's cool. So it goes through the three notes, big whoop, right? Well, okay. I'll do you one better. We can change the note order. So right now we have it going up. We can change it so that the notes are going down. (instrumental music) And as you can hear, because this thing is always so quantized and locked to the beat. You do have to be a little bit precise with when you hit the notes otherwise it kind of jams up the sequence a little bit so we can go up down, which means it's going to go up through the notes and then back down. (instrumental music) Okay this one is basically going to jump in intervals through the chord (instrumental music) and then this is the vortex over here where we kind of have it going into the center of the core that we have. (instrumental music) Okay and then we have the hand, which is basically just the order in which you play things, which is kind of cool (instrumental music) and then over here, we have our variation which we can play with and this is basically just some different patterns for the sequence of notes. (instrumental music) Okay now, when we fire that up with the octave range here which basically is going to make it so that as it goes through the sequence it's going to repeat in octaves above what we played. So when we just have it in one it means that we're only going to hear it in one octave. If we set it to two and let me bring this back down and set it to something more basic. If we set it to two, we're going to go through two octaves. (instrumental music) Similarly with three and four, I'll go down a little bit lower. (instrumental music) Okay and then if you start to get with the variation over here. (instrumental music) Those are just some different sort of preset patterns in there that are really cool and really handy. Now we have the rate and right now we're set to live and live basically just means that whatever I play it's going to fill in all of those notes regularly. So it's going to play all 16th notes with no break but if I hit grid, what I can do is I can create a custom rhythm and the rate still applies. The rate is going to dictate what each step represents. We can make a longer sequence or a shorter sequence. Let's set it to eight steps how about and I'm just going to click on each step to create a sequence here. (instrumental music) So that's pretty cool. We can do some very interesting things. We can also tie notes together. So let's say I wanted to have a note here and then have it hang over into that third step. I can just click and drag. (instrumental music) Oh, that's cool. I'm really enjoying that and keep in mind, the height of each step does represent the velocity. Now, in addition to that, I can hit this chord button down below and what that's going to do is not parse out all the notes. It's actually going to let all of the notes play at the same time, the chord that I'm playing. (instrumental music) Pretty cool, huh? So you could do this with all chords. You could do this with no chords and by the way, if I just hit one note it's going to just play the rhythm that I have set keeping in mind, the octave range and so forth. (instrumental music) So those are the basic functions of the arpeggiator. It's a really great way to get certain types of more retro sounds, some sort of classic figures but it's also a really cool creative tool for taking midi information and making some new musical ideas out of it.

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