mike: you've been looking for inspiration for implementing an arpeggiator,
and previously i recommended the oberheim cyclone (which i've never seen,
but i have the drummer and it's both amazing and flaky) and the kawai
k5000 (which i have, but never played with the arpeggiator).
i've been playing with my XL-7 lately, and that arpeggiator seems to be
the one that's most likely to actually get any use from me.
check out the user manuals for the command stations (XL-7, MP-7, PX-7) or
the proteus 2500 for details about what those arpeggiators can do. i think
some of e-mu's other modules (later proteus series; carnival, audity-2000,
orbit, etc) may have had the same arpeggiators, but i'm not sure. part of
what makes those arpeggiators super-awesome is what can be done with them
in real-time.
that said... and given the hardware limitations even in the expanded
HAWK-800, i'm wondering if it might be best to do a ∗simple∗ arpeggiator,
or none at all.
just for the record, an arpeggiator is not on my wish list of proposed
features. partly because i already have a k5000 and an XL-7, but also
because the UI of the poly-800 just doesn't seem to lend itself to
programming a powerful arpeggiator. also, part of what makes the XL-7
arpeggiator infinitely more useful to me than the one on the k5000 (even
if, let's say, they're both amazing) is that the k5000 arpeggiator is
built into the k5000 so using it with anything else is a PITA... the
arpeggiator on the XL-7 (which is my current sequencer) is upstream from
anything i'd want to arpeggiate. so even if the HAWK-800 had an
arpeggiator and display comparable to the k5000, i don't think i'd get
much use out of the arpeggiator, for the same reasons i don't bother using
the k5000's arpeggiator.
so, my vote is to focus on simplicity... up, down, up-down, random,
octave... maybe something to adjust speed and range. but even that isn't
something that i would personally get much use out of.
i think if you want to do an uber-arpeggiator it should be a separate
project. among other things you can then give it the UI that it would
deserve, build in all of the best features from the best arpeggiators ever
made, make it flash-able so new features can be added, but also it
shouldn't have to compete for clock cycles with (what i think are) more
important things that the HAWK-800 ~really~ needs.
--
...atom
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