This Arpeggiator Technique Is YOUR Sequencer

In this video I show you how I use the arpeggiator to inspire new tracks, build complex melodies, and instant basslines! A very simple technique that I believe is sometimes overlooked.
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[@EZBOT_]

Join the discord! discord.gg/KUSBH9h My website: ezbot.live

[@LoweredSaturn]

Great job Matt. You just got a new subscriber... Looking forward!

[@ModePhaser]

Elektron seriously needs to start paying you or at least sponsoring your content. Pretty much everything I know about my boxes comes from your channel. 🤘

[@EZBOT_]

Haha, in my dreams

[@BrendonBrooks]

I second that. If it wasn't for EzBot, Cuckoo and The Messy Desk I would have sold these boxes years ago.

[@1UpBebop]

Fun fact: the Digitone manual says that the arp offsets and transpose functionality should be relative to whatever scale you set up. Eg- you're C major playing a string of Cs and you then you offset 1 it should be D. Of course this doesn't work - it stays chromatic and you get C#. Elektron have been told this since the release. They've claimed this would be fixed, constantly, but here we are, years later still waiting for proper scale lock functionality. Think of how easy it could be set up chord progressions / bass lines, and more if transposition and offsets could actually be locked to the scale choice.

[@tullamusic]

When I figured my Minibrute 2S has this functionality I literally felt like I had unlocked some sort of chird progression cheat code lol so I can imagine people wanting this to be fixed for sure.

[@tragicwill]

Is this still true?

[@Screenshot1015]

Digitone is now and always has been their best box.

[@andydavis5845]

Oh yeah. Picking mine up next week. Was about to get sh4d but this machine won me over.

[@Gerry_Dorsey_]

This is great! I love this technique with the A4 because it has "random" as an arp type. You can put in a 4 note chord, hit random on the arp, and it will give you an instant random melody with those 4 notes! Give us random on the DN elektron!!!

[@_justin_joe]

Wicked good tip! We have so many tools at our disposal! We dont need new gear, just new ideas like this.... :-)

[@cameldiaz]

Shift and the arrows and you can move the all thing steps down and up

[@EZBOT_]

I am gonna be honest with you, I did not know that. Haha, nice!

[@MrJemabaris]

This is kinda what the Metropolis and Metropolix sequencers are all about. Love my Metropolix!

[@Asyouwere]

Very nice!! Need to dust off my DN again now, thanks Matt!

[@OoraMusic]

Wish the Syntakt had the arpeggiator :) great video!!

[@jamesm8211]

Hoping they add that, kind of a shame considering it’s a baseline machine. But if you’re using a daw you can just arp the box via the vst plugin which is very fun.

[@jeroen2303]

I mostly use the Arp of the octatrack for this. With the octatrack you can make all notes fall in a certain key. Then using the lfo's on either the transpose or on a second or third note. While doing this all will stay in the predetermined key!

[@EZBOT_]

Definitely most effective on the Octatrack, totally agree

[@tacticalgrooveorbit2379]

@@EZBOT_ it would be so nice to have a short tuto for the OT then ;) tnaks and big up!!! you rock man!

[@PORRFNK]

@@tacticalgrooveorbit2379 Agreed

[@kaz4g]

、し

[@nosynthtofear2681]

@@tacticalgrooveorbit2379 +1

[@rgrant]

I like the pan technique. I have been playing around with Unison mode and retriggering tracks which gives some interesting results to the tracks with Arps on them.

[@CayTaylan]

Dope shit. Gonna try. Thanks.

[@maarzt]

there is great value to this type of bitesize video that show off the simple things in (Elektron) life.

[@martinb3483]

reminds me of working with the phrase editor in renoise

[@JorgBarrett]

Amazing work as usual, feeling the groove

[@ChristopherStoppiello]

Wait. I don't know how I never realized that the numbers for the trig length was equal to steps. 🤯

[@DanChippendaleMusic]

I'm going to give this a go nice one. One downside it that if you mute the track, it won't play another note until the sequencer hits trig 1 again. Guess it's not a biggie if the track isn't going to be muted and you use the amp page to fade the track in/out.

[@0e0]

i use this technique with my Analog Keys all the time it's super fun

[@louiscerutti4510]

Good morning and Thanks Matt!

[@veets1891]

Very helpful. Thanks for sharing!

[@FourTetTrack]

Thanks for the tips Mathew!

[@Number01]

Also, you are a ELEKTRON treasure in the synth space. I've learned a lot from you and @surco about these really amazing devices. Keep it up, you're doing great!

[@touchthatdial]

Seriously good tutorial, thanks!

[@MrCoyoteculler]

Cape worthy ! (SUPER Cool)

[@grandmasterjo1]

The magic of the arp 👌👌

[@lyubagook6516]

Just huge THANX!!!!❤

[@sandyturner1911]

Wow! Thanks so much! I just got a Digitone, and now I will be able to start making music, so much faster ..Subbed.

[@defnlife1683]

techno & synthwave a la carte!

[@Number01]

Wow! Excellent. I had no idea about this. Thank you for the vid.

[@AmarylisFlow]

This is so cool ❤

[@howardanderson3061]

Hey Matt, another brilliant tutorial (for lack of better words)……I’m always amazed at all the great ideas you bring to the Elektron line.

[@calderwood9641]

Great demo tutorial! Love the bubbly in the background.

[@EZBOT_]

I know you would!

[@didogitbmx]

great vid, You can take it a step further with trigless trigs and parameter locks too :)

[@PaulSalamoneComedy]

This is great, I'm trying both tonight after work

[@jasonstam8661]

So many great ideas here, thanks for sharing!!! I was begging for you to increase the “range” on that first bass arp lol

[@heyitstom69]

i cant wait to try this!

[@lundsweden]

Great tip... Genius!

[@Xangaperu]

Great tip thanks!

[@bonsaibloom]

Oh my this is wonderful, tyty 🙏🏽

[@Tarskiproject]

That's so good!

[@lensssle]

You are a hero

[@SURCOlive]

Stellar as always! Thanks so much!

[@EZBOT_]

Thank you SURCO!

[@adamstetzer2349]

Another great one Matt. Thanks!

[@scalarneuropulse]

thx !

[@inkfingers]

That is a very cool and groovy panning idea. Thanks EZBot!!!

[@carrizosasebastian]

Thank you so so much! you are a genius!

[@supremeciroc]

You are awesomeness! More!!

[@gabrieldelamora3701]

Thank you so much for your tutorials!!!

[@DielectricFailure]

I’m curious if you could use a line in/out to run a distortion pedal (for guitar) but only on the kick and not effect the other tracks. Awesome tutorial!

[@leesimz_]

These are the tips I like.. Fun and pragmatic…🖤

[@ethermod307]

Great stuff as usual, immediate inspiration machine! I'm wondering if we can achieve something like Steve Reich's piano phase on the DT now.

[@srel6890]

Wow. Thanks!!!

[@michaelrasmussen8590]

Great video Matt. Very helpful.

[@cristianmejia71]

Awesome!! Thanks a lot

[@tendingtropic7778]

cool! such a shame the syntakt doesn't have the same arp as the digitone. how could would that be?

[@andalite7738]

Fantastic video! Thanks for the tips

[@mawest]

love this, ty!

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

Wish you could trig lock the arp steps, you can't lock that reverb to an arp step which is a bummer. It would be great if you could flatten the arp to a track after you are happy with it and then mess with the steps with trig locks. I find I stay away from the arp a little because of this limitation.

[@marcusfreeweb]

No trigless (just parameter) locks either?

[@willp3754]

If you know what you want, just step sequencing it outright is going to be faster in the end.

[@willp3754]

Flattening / rendering the arp would be a great feature, we probably won't see it in the current generation of machines though

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

@@marcusfreeweb no locks, at all

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

@@willp3754 this is what I usually do. Can't do up/down or pingpong sequences easily though.

[@oskultrecord1731]

Amazing. Can you please made a tutorial for midi Octatrack

[@nkozi]

Head's up for my A4 peeps: A speed value of x6 equal to 16th notes, and you set the note length directly next to that knob.

[@EZBOT_]

Yes! This is tracker values, 6 ticks

[@meleraphael]

Sick

[@roytosseram3831]

Very helpfull! Thanks a lot

[@meowow.creates]

Make a video how to connect all these 4 machines together right))

[@RedMeansRecording]

God I love the Digitone arp so much

[@EZBOT_]

And it loves you

[@MrMarcLaflamme]

I love my Digitone entirely with the exception of the FM part 😛. Give me the Analog Four guts but in the Digitone (8 voice poly). Digilog? Default DT high hat?! 😐 (Everything else was stellar!)

[@tonydonnelly783]

So cool!👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👍🏻 thanks!

[@sambanks2996]

This is awesome! So inspiring

[@franzwilhelm9682]

This is molten gold!

[@tiagops]

Amazing man, so simple and so catchy! Thanks, will you use the Arp even more now on my DN.

[@lwpweb]

by the way like on the octatrack i assume on the dgt too you are able to rotate the arp sequence with doing func arrow keys left and right. thats fun for live.

[@FingerMonsterGuitar]

Good video. Subscribed. More please 👍

[@DayflightTrok]

Very nice

[@forbesy8568]

Nice☮

[@G0nz0uk]

This was really useful Matthew! Thanks.

[@DAMAGR]

😩 Wish the Syntakt had the Arp.

[@EZBOT_]

Same same same!

[@meilstone]

Maybe they'll add it with an OS update?

[@johnchesters81]

Great tutorial. Can you live record the arp into the sequencer, so you can use conditional trigs etc on each of the steps (16th notes for example)?

[@Duskmos]

Super cool tip. Enjoying your vids man. =)

[@kp8923]

I rarely complain online but it still baffles me that Elektron won't update the sequencer to lock to a scale. There I'm done, back to being happy and normal

[@EZBOT_]

lol i feel ya

[@genoekenfloeken]

Cool ⚡️

[@agustinmartinez7301]

Thanks for the videos. 👍👏🏻👏🏻💪🔥

[@swissives]

AWESOME!!!❤

[@EZBOT_]

Thank you!

[@stefandorr2850]

very cool!

[@tragicwill]

The part that says cool is my favorite part

[@EZBOT_]

Very cool!

[@Brucelectricmoose]

That's ace

[@willp3754]

I rarely use the arp except on chords. Can quickly turn chord progression into a line, and shape it by p-locking arp mode, rate, etc. This is arguably faster but has its own problems. The arp has no swing, so the resulting groove is usually worse than if the notes were step sequenced.

[@nutella571]

Hey, what headphones Matthew is using here plz?

[@chestnut40]

super cool 🤩 I would like to buy one.....but i dare not.... i'm afraid I'll never get the hang of it :-/ (i think to complex)

[@kloijhi]

on Octatrack mkii how to get arp speed 1/16 it have only multiplied values. In manual speed 6 means 1/16note but something dont work for me. I have arp mode up, spd 6, nlen1/16 (same values for first trigger) but arp plays only first 3notes from 16. Any ideas why?

[@johnpaulpatton9786]

So useful! Is there a way to transfer what you create with the arpeggiator to the sequencer?

[@EZBOT_]

Unfortunately not :/

[@jeejeeBlaps]

Cool

[@AT-eh2eo]

That would be great to make some break beats if it’s plugged into a rack sampler

[@ACarbonellBeceiro]

Pretty cool but if I’m not wrong you lose all sound and parameter lock capabilities from the actual sequencer. Or could triggerless trigs do the trick? Is there a way to “dump” the arpeggiator sequence into the actual sequencer? Looks great for creativity and quick ideas tho. Nice vid 😊

[@EZBOT_]

You got it! That's the whole idea, just another technique to get the juices flowin'

[@Spacechord]

Could I use the arpeggiator with a external synt? Or record the midi from the arpeggiator in ableton and then use it with another synth ? Thank you 🎉😂❤

[@INFINITYREALM]

Great video, thanks. Is there really still no way to send mid arp out on digitone? Is OT the only machine doing that?

[@EZBOT_]

Not yet :/

[@edjefferson9175]

Cool trick! What are your headphones? Wireless?

[@EZBOT_]

Yeah! AiAiAi headphones 🎧

[@davidkempmail]

🔥

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

You have the digis in the wrong order. The Trinity goes DN > ST > DT 😅

[@EZBOT_]

No way, that would make my brain snap! I am glad you are a stubborn hardware user like me though

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

@@EZBOT_ lol, I get triggered seeing them in any other order. It's like when people have DT > DN. I mean, that's just sacrilege, everyone knows it's always DN > DT, it's an unwritten rule passed down through the ages. Also, isn't what you are doing a polymeter, not polyrhythm? Polyrhythm would be same bar length, with a different beat interval. I don't think any of the Elektron boxes can do polyrhytms. I could be wrong though.

[@HAJJ101]

Can we overlap arps for each trig on one track on the digitone using this method? Like a legato for the release instead of instant cut off