Arpeggio vs. Arpeggiator

Alright. I need to vent and get this out of my system.

Since putting producing on hold for almost a year and coming back, it’s almost like I have to learn some things all over again. Somethings come back, other things I have to work for. Right now I’m fighting with Reason’s “new” apreggiator (the RPG-8). And…I’m fighting with it, mostly because I wanted to create an arpeggio and I can’t. K?

And you’re reading this like “what the hell? how is it that an arpeggiator cannot create an arpeggio?” Great question. (I WISH I had the effin’ answer). The key to answering that question is asking another. What is an arpeggio?

An arpeggio is a broken chord where the notes are played one after the other, rather than all at the same time. Since I’m a tonic scale kinda chick, I’m used to those notes being the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes. In school band, we used to have to play all of the major scales followed by their arpeggios (I used to play a mean-ass marimba). Because I’m a percussionist with a relatively low level of theory- I usually think of chords according to the arpeggio of the tonic note. (*Dodges tomato being thrown*)

I say all of that to say that my frustration (and confusion, really) with the RPG-8 is that in basic use of this arpeggiator (i.e. wiring it to an instrument, setting the parameters, and playing a MIDI controller) it, indeed, doesn’t create arpeggios, but “arpeggiated” octaves. From what I can see, when you play a note on the controller, the arpeggiator created an arpeggio-type rhytmn jumping from that note to one or more of it’s higher or lower octaves, depending on the parameters you have set.

Bummer.

You-already-knew-I-was-going-to-say-this, but FL’s arpeggiator (and by arpeggiator I mean the FUNCTION tab of the channel settings dialog box. In the second box (it’s titled “arpeggiator,” so you can’t miss it), you simply decided if you want it to move up, down, back and forth, or random. Set the tempo and gate for it, and chose what chord the arpeggio is based off of. Siiiimple.

[I was intending to put an FL video here, but I didn't like the ones I found. Maybe I should do one of my own]

Further proof that you don’t really need fancy tools to do simple shit.

However- we all know that Reason is very flexible. Here’s a different but very versatile way of doing something similar. I guess since you can change the notes easily yourself, you can make it based on any chord you want (although the work here is alittle more manual).

Before I hate on the RPG-8 too much, I do intend to read this blog and see what else it’s capable of.