Is there a way to smoothly change the ARP rate?

CCMP · 2023-10-09T12:39:59.123Z

On the A4mk2, does the arp rate always have to be sync’d to the tempo?
And is there a way to move the rate smoothly?
(To be able to speed it up and slow it down independently of the master tempo?)

ligature · 2023-10-09T12:43:46.615Z

From the manual:

CCMP · 2023-10-09T13:18:06.852Z

Yes I know this, that’s the regular arp speed setting.

I’m wondering if anyone has found a way around this to be able to run arps in free time on the A4.
I can do it via an external arp, but I was wondering if anyone had any more complex approaches to it within the A4.

Fin25 · 2023-10-09T13:33:48.745Z

I’m not much of an arp guy, but I was playing around with it yesterday and I came to a similar conclusion.

It’d be more interesting if you could get in there with plocks or modulation, but it is what it is I guess.

The only way I can think of achieving what you want is to modulate the BPM externally, but then of course you’ve got all the other issues associated with changing the BPM (delay, modulation times etc.).

ligature · 2023-10-09T13:45:53.946Z

With Digitone you could assign an LFO to A/B DEL and get some kind of variation on the note times (I think). Then you can of course save multiple sound variations with different arp settings & times and use sound locks in a track. It’s a shame that arp settings are not stored with sounds on the A4.

The closest thing I can think of for the A4 is modulating the attack of the amp envelope but I’m not sure if that would get you there. Smoothly adjust the rate, I don’t think that’s doable, unfortunately. That would require the rate to be an LFO destination or plockable and used with parameter slides.

Or you can write your own arp in a track, use microtiming, bump the tempo and scale down everything else if needed.

CCMP · 2023-10-09T14:53:20.960Z

Fin25:

It’d be more interesting if you could get in there with plocks or modulation, but it is what it is I guess.

Yes, this is what I was thinking about… I really like what the arp does do on the A4, being able to set its loop length and transpose in the setup page is great, but I’ve had the urge to purposefully drift it out of time and it’s not set up for that. Mehhh.

(I can do what I want via Ableton/Overbridge pretty easily though.)

ligature · 2023-10-09T15:54:14.093Z

I know that’s not exactly what you wanted but that’s the closest I could get. First example is the regular arp for reference. On the second one I’ve set LFO1 to square, targeting the amp volume, acting as an AMP envelope. LFO2 modulates the phase of LFO1, i.e. shifts the start of the note playing.

The problem is that this also affects the note length. Thankfully, the A4 has two destinations per LFO so I’ve set LFO1 to AMP DECAY too. The idea is to shift both the start and the end of a note equally.