From the course: Logic Pro X: Making Beats

Going deeper into Arpeggiator - Logic Pro Tutorial

From the course: Logic Pro X: Making Beats

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Going deeper into Arpeggiator

I'd like to show you now the creative possibilities with the note order and advanced parameters in Arpeggiator to really lock your arpeggio into the groove of your project. Here's the same project we used during the previous video. If you're new to Arpeggiator, you may want to watch that video before this one. All the synth parts except the bass line are arpeggiated. Let's actually cycle the first half, and solo this patch on top, tripping cycles. Play it against the drum track. I'll play it for you real quickly with the arpeggio bypassed. And open up the interface. The note order parameters are cool. They provide control of the order of the notes played and cycled at preset pattern rate. The direction buttons are labeled with arrows that are self-explanatory. Here is up, just play from my keyboard. Down, it's subtle. Up, down. And this is so obvious to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. This is only relevant when you're playing more than one note at a time. If I'm just playing one note, we're not going to hear an up and down pattern. This one now selected with the arrows vertically facing each other, is called outside to in. The highest note, then he lowest note, then the second highest note, then the second lowest. The one with the crossing arrows is random. The last button with the hand symbol means as played. The steps will play back in the order that you trigger them. We'll take a look at this in just a minute. The octave range settings, like it says, change the octave, but also toggles to inversions. Flipping the order of the notes in the chord for that subtle adjustment of the melodic content. It can really make the part lay into your project just right. Play around with these. So, changes made while the arpeggio is playing are seamlessly applied for the running arpeggio. I'll adjust the rate knob while the arpeggio is active, and you'll see just what I mean. Let's go back to the Note Order button we didn't explore yet with the hand, the As Played button. I'll turn on the latch mode for this. When you first click As Played, this little lock beneath is opened. You've gotta look closely, but it's open. Now it's closed, now it's opened. Click to lock the current note order, and it will look like that. So let's put something in, I'll play an F and C together, a fifth apart. And lock it. Now when I play a G key, it will change the root note of that interval. Or I'll play an octave below, a low F, dropping it down. This note order can be saved with a Preset setting on top, right under this menu here, Save Setting. The pattern top here at the bottom, has two distinct functional modes, Live and Grid. Let's look at Grid first. This is very straightforward. You click on the number beneath the step in the display to enable or disable it from the pattern, just like this. Pull up to adjust the height of that step, the velocity. Click again to remove a step. Very straightforward. Oh, one more detail, adjust the length of the step by dragging out horizontally. Live mode allows you to really edit the feel of your arpeggio by adding your own rests and ties to notes for some dramatic and creative results. The best way to experiment with this is to enable Latch mode, and switch the latch behavior to Add. Now, I'll hold down a chord, and you'll see the steps in the step grid. A lighter shade than when we were in Grid mode. Switch it to Live mode. And I'll hold down a chord. I'm playing a triad, three notes, so you see three steps. The third step, labeled Three, is the one I can now adjust with a tie by clicking this Tie button. Now it's going to hold through two more steps. I'm going to hit the rest. And now when I play again, that's where the next step goes. I'll put a rest, and now when I play again, that's where that step goes. I'll hit the tie, and a rest. Hit a step, tie, you get the idea. You can definitely get lost in Live mode in a good way. If you want to add the pattern that you create to your project, and be able to do MIDI editing to it, click the Capture Live Performance button here on top, next to the Play button. And drag the playing arpeggio to the software instrument, just drag it right up top here. And it's placed as a MIDI region. You can see the outline of the button as you are dragging. Options sets global playback parameters such as note length, velocity, crescendo, random, and swing. Lower the note length for a gated effect. Swing is a parameter you might find yourself adjusting, to tighten the sync of your arpeggio with the rest of your track. A little, goes a long way here. It's a lot of, reverb on this, so it's a little hard to hear, but play around with that swing one. While arpeggio is designed to immediately sound good and introduce creative movement to your project with these default presets, it's fun and easy to adjust parameters for unique texture to your project.

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