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3.3. Using the Arpeggiator
An arpeggio is basically an outline of a chord: the notes are played individually, rather than
all at once. It's what you hear when you pluck the strings on a guitar from top to bottom, or
the other way around. A major part of learning to play the guitar is figuring out how to play
different fingerpicking/arpeggio styles. The arpeggiators on the KeyStep Pro do all these
things for you. Each KeyStep Pro track, except Track 1, has an arpeggiator.
To play an arpeggio, activate a track (try Track 2), press the Arp button then hold down a
chord. Now press the 'Play' button and your arpeggio will start. It's rather tiresome to hold
keys down, especially if what you really want is to change your arpeggio, or if you want to
tweak parameters on your modular system or synth that is connected to the KeyStep Pro.
Pressing HOLD lets you lift your fingers off the keys without stopping the arpeggio. What's
more, once HOLD is active, you can add notes to the arpeggio as long you keep at least one
key pressed down; just press more keys and those notes will be added to the arpeggio at
the played velocity. You can add up to 16 notes to an arpeggio.
Again, there's a lot to discover here, so try some of these:
• 'Shift' + Arp to change the 'strum' pattern of your arpeggio
• 'Shift' + Time Division (1/4th, 1/8th, 1/16th, 1/32nd)
• 'Shift' + Scale. Selecting another scale will instantly change the tonal focus of your
arpeggio.
And there's even more: the Gate, Velocity and Randomness encoders! Tweaking the Gate
knob will lengthen or shorten the gate time, Velocity will add or subtract velocity, and
Randomness will inject random notes into your arpeggio. Press the Play/Pause button again
to pause the arpeggio pattern; press it once more to resume playback from where you
stopped.
Arturia - User Manual Keystep Pro - Basic Operations 19
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