How do I use the Arpeggiator?

One often-overlooked feature of the PC2 is the arpeggiator. This can be a lot of fun to play with – you can get many interesting and unusual effects. Basically, an arpeggiator takes notes that you play and repeats them in a pattern. Typically, you might use it to arpeggiate chords that you play, but it can have other uses such as playing percussion patterns.

This tutorial will be a bit different from the others – instead of creating a specific arpeggiator effect, we will experiment with various parameters and hear the different results.

You can use the Arpeggiator in both the Internal Voices and MIDI Setups mode. We will start in Internal Voices mode, but if you find a specific set of parameter values that you like as you explore through the tutorial, you can simply press the Store button to save the settings as a single zone Setup.

1. Start in Internal voices and call up any sound that you want to work with. To best hear the effects of the arpeggiator, you might want to start with a program that has a percussive attack and also decays, such as piano, marimba, guitar, etc.

2. Press the Arpeggiator button. Turn the Arp Active parameter On. Play a chord on the keyboard. You should hear the notes arpeggiated. If you hear nothing at all, go to the Global Menu and check to make sure the Clock parameter is set to Internal. If you hear notes but they aren’t arpeggiated, press the >> three times to make sure Zone Enable is On and once more to make sure Latch Mode is set to Keys.

Try playing a single note. Notice that it is repeated. Try adding more notes. As you press them they are added to the arpeggio. Let go of one of the keys. Notice that note is dropped from the arpeggio while the others continue. Notice that the arpeggiator plays the notes in the specific order that you strike them. Also notice that the loudness of the arpeggiated notes depends on how hard you strike the keys.

Hold the sustain pedal and let go of the keys. Notice that even though the notes ring out like they would when you press the sustain pedal, the arpeggiation stops. In order for the arpeggiator to work, the keys must be held down, or otherwise latched

Now turn the Arp Active parameter back to Off.

3. Hold the Controllers button and press the SW4 controllers button. Press the << button and set the Switch Type to Toggle. Press the >> button, then 116, then Enter. The PC2 uses MIDI controller 116 to turn the arpeggiator on and off. Press the >> button and set the On Value to 64. Press the >> button twice and set the Off Value to 0. Since a Switch controllers has only two states (On or Off), any value between 0 and 63 is considered Off and any value between 64 and 127 is On. Now if you turn the button on and strike the keys, you will hear arpeggiation. If you turn the button off, then you will just hear the notes you played. Leave the button turned on.

As a side note – SW4 is assigned to #116 in the Default Internal Voices Setup, so any time you are in Internal Voices Mode, you can use this button turn arpeggiation on.

4. As long as we are programming the controllers, we will set something else that we will use later. Hold the Controllers button, strike any key and press down. The display will change to show Zone:1 Mpressure, Ctrl Num: Pressure. The MPressure (Mono Pressure) controller is also referred to as aftertouch. After you strike a key, as you press down on the key, a pressure strip senses how hard you are pressing and generates controller data. Aftertouch is similar to the pitch wheel, in that it functions like a spring – it returns to 0 as you let go of the key. Like the sliders, wheels, and continuous control pedals, you can assign any MIDI controller number to aftertouch. However typically, aftertouch is assigned to Pressure, which is a separate MIDI message. If for some reason, this parameter is not set to Pressure, press 132, then Enter to assign Pressure to the MPressure controller.

One final thing to understand: There are actually two different types of aftertouch – Mono Pressure and Poly Pressure. Mono Pressure has a single strip running across the keyboard, so pressing down on any note will generate controller info that will affect ALL the notes played on that MIDI channel. Poly Pressure has a separate sensor for each key so pressing down on a key only affects that key. The PC2 uses Mono Pressure.

5. Press the Arpeggiator button, then press the >> button once to get to the Key Range display and >> once more so that the cursor is on the High Note parameter. Hold Enter and strike Middle C to set the High Note to C4. Now play a chord in the bass and a melody in the treble. Notice that any notes up to C4 are arpeggiated but all notes above that are played as normal. The Key Range parameter lets you set a range of notes that will be affected by the arpeggiator while others can be played regularly.

Hold Enter and strike the top note on the PC2 to put the arpeggiator back to playing across the keyboard.

6. Press the >> button. You are now on the Zone Enable parameter. This allows you to have some zones in your Setup that are arpeggiated while other zones play normally. Several of the preset Setups utilize this parameter. For example, Setup 23 Rhythmic Chase has arpeggiated percussion layered with the Piano and the Neptune programs, which do not arpeggiate. Or Setup 20 Ambients, which has an arpeggiated bass split with some melodic programs.

7. Press the >> button. The next parameter is Latch Mode

8. Press the >> button. The Play Order parameter lets you determine how the notes are arpeggiated. The current setting should be Played, which is the default. As we noticed before, the notes arpeggiate in the order in which you hold them down. Try changing this parameter to each of its possible values and play chords on the keyboard to hear the difference. It should be obvious how most of the possibilities work, but for definitions of the various values, see pages 5-20 & 5-21 of the manual.

9. Press the >> button. You can set the beat subdivision for the arpeggiated notes. This is based on Tempo, which is measured in Beats Per Minute. So if your clock is set to 120 BPM and you set the Beats to 8th notes, you will hear the equivalent of 240 arpeggiated notes in one minute.

10. Press the >> Button. You can set the Tempo for the arpeggiation here. However, more control is possible. Hold the Controllers Button and move Slider D. Press 133, then Enter to assign Tempo for the slider. (You might want to check the Scale, Offset, and Curve parameters for Slider to make sure they are at their defaults of 100%, 0, and Linear. You will find these parameters by pressing the >> button. )

When you call up a Setup, the initial tempo will normally be set to the value you set in the Tempo parameter. However, if you have a controller (such as a slider) assigned to Tempo AND you set an Entry value for that slider, that Entry value will override the Tempo setting in the Arpeggiator menu. If you do use an Entry value for a controller assigned to Tempo, you will notice that two numbers are displayed. The first number will be a value between 0 and 127, while the second number will be the actual BPM value (between 20 and 300 BPM).

A final note – the Tempo parameter only applies as long as the Clock parameter in the Global menu is set to Internal. If you set it to External, it will follow the tempo of any clock messages detected at the MIDI IN port. If no clock is detected, there will be no arpeggiation (no sound will be heard when you press the keys).

11. Press the Arpeggiator button, then press >> seven times to return to Tempo, and once again to go to Duration. This lets you set the duration of each note being played by the arpeggiator. Try setting different values to hear the difference. At 100%, it is completely legato. The lower you set the number, the more staccato the notes are played.

12. Press the >> button. The Velocity Mode parameter determines what velocities are used to create the notes. The current setting should be Played, which is the default. As we noticed before, the notes get softer or louder in the arpeggio depending on how hard you strike the keys. Try setting this parameter to different values to see the difference. If it is set to Fixed, then a specific velocity is used for all notes, determined by the Fixed Vel parameter (the next parameter, accessed with the >> button). If it is set to Last, then all of the arpeggiated notes use the velocity of the last note you strike. Try playing a 3 note chord softly, then striking a fourth note hard – all of the notes will now be loud. If you then restrike just that one note softly, all the notes are soft.

Setting the value to Pressure means the velocities will be controlled by aftertouch. As you push down on any key, the velocities will be come louder. As with Last, pushing down on any one key will affect all the notes. (This setting will only work if the MPressure controller is assigned to Pressure, which we did in step 4.)

The final value is Ctrl 117, which allows you to control the velocities from a MIDI controller.

13. Press >> twice to get to the Note Shift parameter. This parameter and the following two parameters are used in conjunction with each other. Note Shift will take the notes that you play and transpose them up or down. Each time the arpeggio pattern is repeated, the notes will transpose by the amount you set. Set the Note Shift to 2, then play a chord. The notes will arpeggiate, then transpose up a whole step and repeat the pattern, then transpose up a whole step again and repeat the pattern.

Press the >> button. The next parameter, Shift Limit will determine how far the PC2 will keep shifting from the original pitches. Set the Shift Limit to 12 and play the keys again. Notice that the pattern will shift up in whole steps till it reaches an octave transposition, then the pattern starts shifting down in whole steps till it reaches the original notes you played, then starts shifting up again.

Press the >> button. The Limit Option parameter determines what happens once the arpeggiator reaches the Limit. With the default value of Unipolar, it shifts up and down, as you have seen. Try setting this to different values and listen to the end results. Complete descriptions of all these values are found in the manual on pages 5-23 & 5-24.

These three parameters allow you to do some pretty wild things with the arpeggiator. The best thing to do is just experiment with different settings. When you find something you like, you can save it as a Setup.

14. Press the >> button. If you turn the last parameter, Glissando, to On, then the arpeggiator will not only play the notes you strike, it will also play all the notes in between the notes you strike.

In addition to making regular arpeggios with pitched instruments, you can get interesting effects with by using the arpeggiator with drum and percussion programs. The PC2 itself has somewhat limited abilities in this area since you can’t edit the placement of the drum sounds in the drum programs, but if you use the PC2 to control an external sound module in which you can edit the sounds, you can create many interesting patterns.

The key to this is to create programs that have no sample assigned to specific notes. That way, by including those notes in your arpeggiated pattern, you can get the equivalent of rests, to create more varied rhythmic patterns.

You may want to go through the various parameters we have described to create an arpeggiator setting you want to work with. Then Name and Save this Setup –

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