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best hardware arpeggiator

2009-01-09 by Atom Smasher

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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