Work around for lack of arpeggiator quantization ? Help!

ometwalli · 2014-07-12T04:13:21.000Z

I seriously need help to make this work. Analog four/keys has arpeggiation for each track but no way to time them to a midi clock, and it’s near impossible for me to time them right. I’m taking care of so many things at the same time, any mistakes on my part train wrecks the entire song.

In all my other synths, this was a basic feature. arpeggiator quantize, and it’s not a difficult thing to add, so i’m completely at a loss why this isn’t available. especially for such a high end synth. My live set is suffering in a big way.

I’m hoping someone can help me.

are there any work-arounds, tricks , to quantize live midi notes ? or any other way.

Thanks in advance.

Hongkong · 2014-07-16T16:51:46.000Z

It sounds like you just need to set the Speed settting of the arp ( SPD ) to sync it to your BPM.

“A setting of 6 equals 16th notes, a setting of 12 equals 8th notes and so on.”

Housecliche · 2014-07-16T18:39:07.000Z

I read this as the OP means he’s looking for realtime quantisation as he’s playing - so no matter when you strike a note, the arp always starts in time, on the next beat. The arp timing settings are just note length/beat (8ths, 16ths,etc) not realtime quantisation - I think…

ometwalli · 2014-07-17T17:35:17.000Z

Yes, you are right. It’s live quantization of the first note of the arpeggiator. If I start an arpeggiated sequence by pressing the keys a 1/10 of a second too late, it sounds awful. This is why many synths have a “midi clock” sync option, so that I can just press the keys whenever and it will snap the arp to the next midi clock time division, and sound perfect everytime. When you have four arpeggiators going on at the same time, it’s almost impossible to time them accurately without some help

crypticresonance · 2015-05-20T09:58:58.000Z

Hmm, has this been fixed since?

snowcrash · 2015-05-20T11:46:13.000Z

""ometwalli"":

This is why many synths have a “midi clock” sync option, so that I can just press the keys whenever and it will snap the arp to the next midi clock time division, and sound perfect everytime.

That’s actually not how it works. MIDI clock resolution is finer than that, actually when your arpeggio starts off-beat it’s still clocking on the MIDI-clock-raster. What actually happens on other machines is, that it resets the arp on MIDI clock start and only counting every nth-clock-tick to the resolution of the arp. The standard MIDI clock ticks 24 times every quarter note so e.g. if you have set the ARP to play 16th notes, a note will sound every 6 clock ticks.

Back to topic: with arps on the Ak/A4 you probably have two usecases: 1) the arp is gated by the sequencer, 2) the arp is gated live via the keyboard

Can be solved with quantisation as described above. One can also use this to fake-quantise live sequencing, by staying in rec mode and p-lock the chords on the first trig, yet one would have to set note lengths in advance and it isn’t very intuitive to play.
would require an upgrade from Elektron so the ARP would get quantised to the values of the ARP’s clock setting.

Btw. the Arturia Minibrute does this quite well, both in ARP and sequencer mode. Even if you switch the ARP/Seq off in between. The BSII on the other hand miserably fails to properly sync to any external clock, rendering the ARP/Seq usless besides being a nice scratch pad for stand-alone noodling…

vos · 2015-05-20T12:18:54.000Z

It’s always been like that … I didn’t find no info if they gonna change that… but I hope so

peasman · 2017-07-28T16:12:53.973Z

Yeah I could really do with an option to quantize my live arpeggios. Sometimes it’s ok to have flexibility but sometimes it sucks, be good to have the choice…