Arpeggiator: Turn Held Chords into a Rhythmic Pattern
An arpeggiator replaces a held group of notes with a sequence. Rate chooses when steps begin, Style chooses their pitches, and Gate chooses how long each step lasts. Change those decisions separately.
Read one chord as a sequence
This original eight-second phrase contains four triads, twelve input notes in total. Each chord lasts 1600 ms and begins every 2000 ms. The first holds MIDI pitches 48, 52 and 55, with velocities 72, 81 and 90. Arpeggiator feeds a sustaining Synth so its short gates remain audible rather than disappearing inside a naturally decaying sample.
Turn four held triads into an eighth-note walk
Interactive MIDI example
Up selects ascending pitches. Rate 1/8 places steps 250 ms apart at 120 BPM; Gate 50% makes each one 125 ms long. The first chord produces seven attacks before its held span ends. Across four chords, twelve input notes become twenty-eight output events, not twenty-eight simultaneous voices.
| Start times | Pitch sequence | Velocity sequence |
|---|---|---|
| 0, 250, 500 ms | 48, 52, 55 | 72, 81, 90 |
| 750, 1000, 1250 ms | 48, 52, 55 | 72, 81, 90 |
| 1500 ms | 48 | 72 |
First change spacing, then articulation
Compare Rate 1/8 with 1/16. The latter places steps 125 ms apart and creates thirteen attacks per chord, fifty-two overall. Gate still reads 50%, so durations halve to 62.5 ms. If the result feels rushed, restore Rate before trying to solve the problem with quieter playback.
Back at 1/8, raise Gate to 100%: the event count and starts stay unchanged, but each gate becomes 250 ms. At 200%, steps last 500 ms and overlap neighboring pitches. A step can extend beyond its source chord's release; durations are not simply clipped to that held span. Later same-pitch attacks can still shorten overlapping events.
Change the walk without moving its clock
Down reverses the pitch order. Updown turns back without repeating both endpoints: the first triad cycles 48, 52, 55, 52. Upanddown includes the endpoints and cycles 48, 52, 55, 55, 52, 48. That repeated top note is a deliberate retrigger, not a stuck MIDI note. Compare with the before/after preview and expand Note-event details for exact starts and gates.
Offset rotates the pattern's starting position; it does not delay playback in milliseconds. Steps adds transposed copies after the base pattern. With Steps 1 and Distance +12, an Up triad visits 48, 52, 55, then 60, 64, 67 before repeating. Distance is a semitone interval here, not automatic key detection.
Decide what ends a pattern
Repeats zero displays infinity but means continue while this chord group remains available. Set it to 1 with Steps zero: only one three-step pattern plays per chord, giving twelve output notes. Restore zero, then enable Hold. The first three chords continue through their gaps until the next chord arrives; the final chord keeps its natural end. This example then has thirty-one events, not a permanently latched last chord.
Sync aligns starts to global multiples of the selected beat division. Turning it off starts the pattern at each group's onset; it does not expose a free-running millisecond Rate. These chords already begin on the grid, so this toggle alone will not change them. Short off-grid notes elsewhere can be skipped if their span contains no grid point.
Chord groups come from overlapping note spans, not harmonic analysis, and each new group starts a fresh pattern. The Velocity Decay and Target fields currently do not activate a velocity ramp in this panel's authored configuration; listen to the inherited 72/81/90 accents instead. This guide makes no claim of live-input arpeggiation. Bypass restores the held triads while Synth remains active; Reset parameters restores both devices. Rewind after edits, since seeking into earlier steps does not replay already-started notes.