Arpeggios without re-triggers often sound like incoherent ramblings many because the bass notes become inconsistent, falling on different parts of the beat/metre in a bar. A simple re-trigger after a set number of beats or bars fixes this issue and makes it much easier to get coherent bass structures to the arpeggios. Problems I have found with arpeggios in vrs 1 of Scaler including vrs 1.8 was that if you want to use chords which are not symmetrical ie; not the same amount of notes, you can find yourself straying off the beat too much. This is not helpful if you want to lay down a structured bass pattern to the arpeggio. This also limits chord choices.Since development of vrs 1 is now not on going I would like to know if this has been improved upon in vrs 2 of Scaler?
But wouldn’t this just be the same as selecting Triads? If you play a chord with an extension Scaler has to play those notes afterwards. Also Scaler arp has a ‘play quantise feature’ which will lock it in to the next beat. Am I missing something?
Davide thanks. I don’t pretend to know everything about Scaler and I am learning all the time how to use it to make it do what I want. I will have another look at it bearing in mind what you have said to see if I can better understand how to make more sense of it’s arpeggios.
Davide- I had another go but results the same. To make it easier to understand I have made some screenshots which clearly shows how the bass notes are falling & on which beats of the measure. I have detailed my settings. I tried your triad idea with extensions and most of the chords were used like you suggested but results are the same. To put it clearly the Arps will only works well when you have the same number of notes in each of the chords. Might work on simple triads or as long as total sum of the notes of the arpeggio fit in with the beats of the measure for example 8x 1/8th notes in 4/4 time so if your chord has 5 notes in it total sum of up and down equals 10 notes played in the arpeggio so tit will obviously begin again in the next measure as you can see happening in the picture. If this is the effect you are looking for great , but as you go on the bass notes will occur on unpredictable or undesired beats over the measures. A re-trigger can prevent this happening as the arp basically resets itself after a predictable moment such as a bar or 2 bars or whenever it encounters a new midi event such as a new set of midi notes. This is how you stop your arpeggios from becoming incoherent ramblings without a bass note structure. I tried your ideas but found them not able to do this. The results I am getting from Arpeggios in Scaler are still disappointing!
Davide- here is a graphic of another Arpeggio I made with very similar chords but chords were all non symetrical ( differing numbers of notes in the Chords). This one was made in Ableton Live 9 using Arpeggiator with re-triggers). Note that the bass note pattern is now predictable and has more focus because chord changes and hence the lowest notes in the chord are occurring on first beat of the bar. The pattern is the same as that used in Scaler UP and Down. To me this results in the sort of Arpeggio that has more logic and doesn’t go off on a rambling journey without a rhythmic meter to hold on to.
I actually think this example was set to re-trigger as it encountered new mid events ( notes/Chords) because it has a bass note that does not occur @ the start of every bar. So chord lengths were different in this case. So not such a rigid pattern!
Dont get me wrong you don’t have to have bass occurring on the first beat of bar it just has to have some sort of predictable sequence to hold things all together this could be every 2 bars or 3 bars reoccurring or falling on the 3rd beat of the bar for example . As humans we look for patterns, in music people like to have a recurring motif to focus on!
Hi Jumbodude,
I’m part of the development team and thought I would respond. We are aware of some minor inconsistencies in the behaviour of the arp in Scaler 1.8 and these have been addressed in Scaler 2. You should find the improved arpeggiator and the re-triggering in Scaler 2 to be much more consistent.