Arpache SX in Cubase 12

Today we are going to talk about

Arpache SX in Cubase 12 

hello everybody andrew blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today we're going to have a look at arp patchy sx and cubase 12. but before we start i want to remind you that there's a link below to the free content navigation guide which is an easy to navigate webpage with links to all the content on this channel and besides that in the near future i'm going to begin adding tips and other bits of information that will only be available there you know things like simple steps that will get you started and up and running quick things that are in the videos but are written down in simple steps that serve as quick reminders when you need information down the road if you're working with programs like wavelab or cubase plug-ins or the cable guys shaperbox2 and many many other projects that are in the works that i know you're going to find just like i have that this is an invaluable study aid and the other thing i want to make sure you understand is that this is not a simple pdf this is a constantly updated page that has any information that is new or anytime videos are changed really anything updated and once you have it you will always have the latest information constantly updated so if you haven't gotten it already go to the link below click on it and save it to your favorites it's my gift to you and it's absolutely free okay so let's get started so the arp patchy is basically just an arpeggiator and um let me show you it's a midi effect so let's talk about how to get that in there you need a midi track not an audio track and if we go over to the left side um in the inspector and we'll call up this tab that says midi inserts hit that guy and you can pick any one of these there's four of them but let's just pick this first one and you have two of these arp patches there's an apache 5 and then the apache sx the apache 5 is a scaled down version we're not going to look at that one so we go right to the apache sx and that opens this up and the minute we open it up and play our sequence again it immediately takes over and starts arpeggiating everything and the first thing you want to observe on this arp is that there's two uh tabs here there's the classic and the sequence and these are pretty important in terms of what they allow you to do so we're going to investigate the other thing before we go in too deep is um look up at the presets in the upper right and if we click on that guy we're given something we can search and it shows user presets if you have any but it has a factory presets and there is no shortage of presets to experiment through so you can just you know click away at these and you'll get all kinds of options to kind of demonstrate what this thing can do but you definitely have some presets to play with if you want to all right so the first thing you have here is the direction and basically wherever that goes you know changes the direction and you can just take your mouse wheel and move it through these quickly [Music] and hear you know examples of them so there's quite a few options just by changing the direction you have a one-shot mode which will kill the phrase after it plays at one time [Music] or continually so that gives you some nice effects you have a transpose mode if it's off of course it's just going to play the pattern as it is if you add it on depending on whether you go up or down it's going to play in the higher or lower areas the transpose is tied into this one below it that says repeats so if you have repeats off right now i have it at zero you really hardly won't even hear anything on the transpose option but if i start turning the repeats on you'll hear whatever octave you you know choose that's just going up one octave let's go to two three and that's tied to the pitch shift now normally here it's at 12 which means one octave which makes sense if you start moving it to any of these other ones well you'll get some really bizarre effects let me turn it down you have this midi through option which basically again when the arpeggio is playing it kills the actual cords that you heard originally but when i turn the midi through on then you can hear the chords [Music] as well as the arpeggiated the step size how fast the notes are played right now it's at a 16th note you just change it whatever below that you have the length so if you want the notes you know to be played quick or staccato various overlaps you have this ppq which changes to the basic quantize don't ignore this because you can make some great effects by changing the length of that watch [Music] that's a great sound right there you have this polyphony setting which is set to all but again don't ignore this because by limiting the amount of notes that are played in the arpeggio basically skipping some of the others because you've limited it you'll get some great effects watch this this is it all i'm gonna set it to one four three two see that totally transforms it you have a different totally different arpeggio that way you have this sort by and you have various options from the highest lowest different velocities these make some great differences as well if you put in velocities in the notes or you know you have a specific synthesizer that responds to velocity this can make a difference as well this velocity setting if it says via input it's going by whatever is already there but if i change it over to velocity i can um hit the slider that brings us on to this little tab that says sequence and this is the thing that really makes this particular plugin unique because not only can it play um you know the sequences the way that you know all the arpeggiators do and the way we've talked about but you can create midi parts and drop them right in here and so let's talk about that real quick let's do a real simple example i'm going to go to this track open it up and i'm going to bring up my step input and start at the beginning here and on my keyboard i'm going to play a real simple pattern [Music] so let's see we got this thing here and we can now take that part just grab the midi part and drag it over and there's a part here that says drop midi sequence i can take this over drag it onto this part let go of it and now i'm going to play a key on my keyboard and as long as i hold that key down it will play that pattern and then you can start adjusting the various things the same way you would you know as we did before you can hit these things to change the speed and the resolution i'm going to share with you you know a couple of tricks that i've figured out with this and if you know how to do some of these things this is an extremely powerful uh option so as usual let me show you what i'm talking about i'm going to go back to this pattern again here i'm going to increase it from one bar to two bars and then i'm basically going to get rid of what i just did in there all right so for example i'm going to change this resolution from an eighth note two and you have all these different options i'm gonna go to a a sixteenth note triplet and then i'm gonna use this thing this line tool and when i have this line tool and these 16 note triplets if i draw a line of notes it's going to automatically fill in 16th note triplets for me [Music] and that's interesting and good but if you do this where we take advantage over here on the left in the pane that says scale assistant you can pick and we i've done a whole video on this stuff and you can look it up under the scale and chords part but this is all you need for this video you can pick you know a particular key you're looking for here let's go to uh g because that's what i want to work with and then i can pick any particular scale i want out of here a harmonic minor melodic minor just endless endless stuff i'm going to take this aeolian mode which is good for minor sounds now what that means is when i now take my line tool and draw again and i just kind of swipe along here i'm going to grab it i'm going to make a little line kind of almost do a ramp up here and then maybe i'll go over here and do the same thing i'll just kind of grab some notes make a line and go up and it is taking only the notes from the g aeolian scale i don't have to worry about trying to figure out with the right notes it automatically writes those in if i don't like it i can draw something completely different i'll just draw some of these notes here maybe something going down something going up and let's see what we got with this crazy thing [Music] close out of this here and this now crazy midi pattern [Music] can then be dragged into the sequencer on the drop midi and now when i play a single note on my keyboard can now in real time [Music] play that crazy sequence [Music] so that means while i've got a song going i can throw in this crazy effect in real time and perform it different octaves i'm playing one octave low one octave high maybe i'll play one high and one real high it's just endless the possibilities maybe throw some a little bit more reverb on one of these sounds and then i can build a track [Music] all right there you go a little look at the our patchy sx um you know really quite the arpeggiator it has you know all those standard features but the ability to drag a midi sequence into it it really separates it from a typical sequencer because what you can create you know on a midi sequence and then drag in is you know it's pretty pretty limitless all right if you haven't grabbed your navigation guide as usual be sure to pick that up before you go it gives you links to all the content on this channel ever growing easy access and it's there to help you find what you're looking for quick so you're not sitting there thumbing through the traditional manual wondering where on page you know 999 is the thing you're looking for hopefully these will speed things along for you all right as usual it's great when you guys are here and we'll see you on the next video