How To Create An Arpeggiator In Logic Pro

An arpeggiator is a feature available on some synths and software packages that plays notes individually in a patten according to the chords played by the user. It's a feature that has been used in many forms of electronic music for decades and has also found it's way into other popular forms of music like rock and pop through the years.

Many people aren't aware that Logic Pro has an arpeggiator built right in, it's just hidden in the scary environment. I was playing around with it the other night and figured I'd put up a step by step picture tutorial on how to use the arpeggiator in Logic Pro. If you can't see the pictures clearly enough just click on them and you'll get the full size.

STEP 1

Go into Logic Pro's Environment window:

STEP 2

Once you're there go to the top left of the window and select "clicks and ports" in the environment layer menu:

STEP 3

Go into the environment menu "New" and select "arpeggiator":

STEP 4

You can see a little arpeggiator icon show up in the environment window. Nothing will happen until we hook this baby up though:

STEP 5

Click and hold onto the wire that goes from "Input View" to "sequencer input" and drag it over to the arpeggiator:

STEP 6

Click at the edge of the top right of the arpeggiator icon to create a new wire and attach it to "sequencer input":

STEP 7

So now it's all connected and ready to go. You'll notice that when you play a chord it won't arpeggiate until you press play in Logic Pro. You'll also notice that the default arpeggiator setting is pretty boring. To make any changes to the arpeggiator select the icon and a bunch of options appear to the left in the inspector. The main ones you'd want to change is the speed of the pattern (16ths, 8ths... etc), whether the arpeggiator pattern goes up or down in pitch (or whether it's random) and the amount of octaves the pattern span. There's other options as well but those are the main ones that you'll use most often.

Now that I have it set up I have it in my environment at all times and just connect it when I need it. There's also ways to make switches in Logic's environment to turn it on and off but I'm not going to get into that just yet. Really great feature of Logic and sure in hell a lot easier to use than syncing up my Yamaha AN1X to arpeggiate!


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