Tips on using Arps

[guydenruyter]

Inspired by Rich Menga's introduction to Arps, here some more hints from my side:

- Patterns and Arps are different things. A pattern is actually a set of up to 4 tracks ('variations' and 'Fills'). Patterns are saved as an entity as such

- An Arp uses a certain pattern, but also specifies how fast it's played, if it changes octaves, if you want to shorten or lengthen notes ('gate'), which buttons to use to switch between the arps' variations and fills, on which part of the keyboard the arp is actually activated etc. Some nice things can be done here, e.g. in 'structure' you can actually repeat a small part of the Arp itself again. In 'Playback' you can make the pattern being played on a number of different octaves, 'up' or 'down' depending on whether you specify a positive or negative value. Best results are obtained when having a Pattern in Phrase or Drum mode (see below).

- a Pattern can have 3 modes: Standard, Phrase Arp, or Drum Machine. Apparently, in Standard mode, all notes in the arp play with the same velocity (you can test this by changing the velocity of one note in the pattern). This looks like a bug, or at least like an obvious missing feature to me, but maybe it's on purpose. In Drum Machine or Phrase Arp mode, velocities seem to play back correctly. Inserting controller events seem to work fine in all modes.

- if you take an existing pattern, and in the Arp Playback section you change the Step from e.g. 1/8th note to 1/16th note, you might also have to change the Gate scale to shorten the durations of the notes (as to avoid note drops by overlaps)

Have fun with arps, if you have other findings, post them here!

[pev69]

Thank you Guy, and Rich, for these tidbits about Arps! I have yet to try making Arps myself, propably because I still do not have a clear idea about how an Arp's composition actually relates to its playback (damn the poor manuals).

I actually miss my first keyboard that I got after our family piano was sold, around 1986: a Yamaha Portatone PSR-70, an elegant little fixed-sound keyboard (of course very poor by today's standards) that had a nice auto-accompaniment feature (bass+drums+chord). You could select a chorded version, where you had to hold the whole chord you wanted, or a very neat single-fingered version, where the top key played would set the base key of the chord. If it was the only key, the chord would be major. If simultaneously you also held one black key below, the chord was minor, and if you also held one white key below, it was a 7th (both with the minor and major). You could even make your own accompaniments (3 memories), and it also had a simple 3-track sequencer, a touch-bar under the keys for fill-in, 3 selectable split-points, MIDI, and a save-to-tape interface like in the computers of that time (C-64, Spectrum...). It really was a great little keyboard!

I know it's "cheap" music (also called elevator/lift music, heh) using that kind of auto-accompaniment, but it was still a nice feature to just play along sometimes. I am kind of hoping that I could use the Arps of Fusion in a Mix to construct some similar accompaniments , if not for very "great" or original music, at least for nostalgia and casual pretend-a-band toying around. I'm sure you cannot imitate the single-fingered major/minor/7th control, but chorded versions should suffice.

Just have to start trying with the Arps.

[mystic]

Actually anything can be done if one puts ones mind to figuring it out...in this case you could assign the osc's pitches to whichever note interval you want such as 1-3-5 for major 1-3b-5 for minor, etc. and map each one to an octave on the keyboard, then when you want a major chord play in the "major key octave zone" and when you want a minor, play in the minor octave zone, etc. You may also have to change the note pitches further to have all of the zones in the same octave. I'm sure there are a couple of ways to approach it. The main thing is if you really ENJOY playing in this fashion then that is what it is all about anyhow! Just figure out a way to do it as I have found the Fusion to be most adaptable keyboard around!