Getting stared

Imaging playing a long C4 on your keyboard and playing it thru energyXT's arpeggiator. What the arpeggiator does, is to transform this long (lets say 2 bars long) note into a pattern of note's, using C4 as the middle or root note. The pattern is started when you press down a midi key, and the pattern stops playing when you release the midi key.

The root note is highlighted in the middle of the arpeggiator's editor screen, and always indicates the midi key you are playing on your keyboard.

Now, click in a simple pattern and try it out yourself.

As you play your keyboard, the pattern will transpose in real-time. It's not limited to one pattern at the same time, so try to play some chords as well. The sync mode comes in very handy when playing multiple midi keys at the same time.

The arpeggiator has 4 modes. (1) Poly-mode lets you play many copies of the same pattern at the same time. (2) Sync-mode is the same as Poly, but it will sync each new copy of the pattern to the copies already playing. Try to play a C2, and then double it with a C1 in Sync-mode, the patterns will always play in sync. (3) Mono-mode lets you play only one copy of the pattern at the same time, and when you change the midi key playing, it will transpose the the pattern automatically on the next step in the grid. (4) Hold-mode is the same as Mono, but will wait until the pattern loops back to the beginning again before transposing the pattern to the new midi key being played.

The arpeggiator support mapping of incoming midi notes to trigger different patterns. You can trigger patterns by midi channel (M.ch), so that midi channel plays pattern 1 and midi channel 2 plays pattern 2. The picture below shows that the pattern is triggered only on midi channel 3 and output is routed to midi channel 5.

With this kind of midi channel routing, the arpeggiator can play 2 (or more) VSTi's at the same time, both playing a different pattern, all with a single midi key. Sometimes its nice to be able to switch between patterns playing the same VSTi, and the arpeggiator supports this by letting you select the keyboard range (K.rng) for each pattern. The picture below shows that the pattern only plays when receiving midi keys between 36 and 48 (thats C1 - C2) and the pattern is transposed up by 24.

Using this approach, you can split your keyboard into many zones, playing one pattern per octave, or one pattern per midi key for that matter.

You can split also patterns into velocity zones. Whats cool about this, is that playing your keybaord softly triggers the first pattern, playing your keyboard hard triggers the second pattern. You can even layer pattens this way. Here's an example:

Pattern 1 plays only at velocity 0-96
Pattern 2 plays only at velocity 63-127

A velocity of 48 will play pattern 1
A velocity of 70 will play both Pattern 1 and 2
A velocity of 100 will play only pattern 2

The basics

The arpeggiator can have any number of patterns. Each pattern can be anything from 1 to 128 steps of notes and can contain any number of control change patterns. The notes in a pattern are inserted by left clicking in the grid. Notes can be any length, so click and drag until you get the lentgh you want. Right-clicking on a note will remove it from the pattern.

You create a new pattern by clicking on the New button just below the grid

To the left of the New button you can find the pattern selector. Click and drag the pattern selector to select which pattern to edit. The picture below shows pattern 2 being edited.

Just below the New button and the pattern selector you'll find the velocity view. Simple click and drag the mouse to edit velocites for each note in the pattern.

Below the velocity view you'll find the control change view. Note that for one single pattern, you can have as many cc-patterns as you want, controlling many params in your VSTi's at the same time. Depending on the VSTi, you can make a single pattern that controls level, pan, filter cutoff and filter Q.

Click the New button to insert a new cc-pattern. The picture below shows cc-pattern 3 in pattern 2 being edited.

Just like with velocity, you just click and drag the mouse to enter cc values. To remove a value on one or more steps, simply right-click. Dont forget to select the cc message the arpeggiator should send out. To do so, click and drag the cc selector. The picture above shows cc 74 being used.

Swing control

The arpeggiator has a simple swing/shuffle control. You'll find it down right in the editor.