Jupiter Arpeggiator

[WesG]

Hey, folks -

 

Does anybody understand the algorithm used by the arpeggiator on the old Jupiter synths?

 

Like, what happens if I pick "random" and play a 1-5-8 chord? Does it randomly pick notes? Pick octaves? Both? Is it completely random, or is just random whether it goes up or down? What happens if it's down all the way, does it wrap to the top? etc.

 

Reason for asking - my band wants to play "Hungry Like the Wolf". I don't want to add a new a board. Was thinking I could build the arpeggiator into a Raspberry PI or something and just hook it up to a zone with local control turned off or something....pick a sound on the RD800 that's close enough and let the Raspberry PI play the notes.

 

EDIT - I just found this: https://www.tindie.com/products/hotchk155/arpie-midi-arpeggiator-kit/ -- anybody ever used it? Do you think it would work for me?

[WesG]

PPS - still thinking of building one, since I could also incorporate Lowrey's Marimba Repeat feature into it....then I could play Baba O'Reilly, too

[Synthoid]

Teenage waste can oh yeah...

 

 

[WesG]

"Teenage Waste Can", Oh LOL

 

Hey, I just figured out how to play that on an RD-800 (in my head). The slicer, it slices in 16 parts, and you can pick which "1/16th note" your note sounds on. So you use two layers, on different 1/16th notes of the slicer, to get the marimba repeat effect. Each layer has the same patch, but different individual note voicing, to prevent the "wrong" notes from sounding with a given slicer.

 

Holy shit, I gotta get home to try this.

 

Still struggling trying to find an arpeggiator solution to satisfy my inner Nick Rhodes who doesn't have roadies. I was >< this close to buying a Boutique JP-08 just now, until I looked at it really carefully and noticed there are no arpeggiator buttons. Stupid Roland.

[J. Dan]

You can do the poor man's version like I used to do with my Jupiter 6, which didn't have the random mode the Jupiter 8 did. I think I selected either 1 or 2 oct, and up/down, and then proceeded to just play various different voicing support and down the keyboard sometimes just doing octaves, etc, so that it was always changing.

[WesG]

Interesting idea, Dan.

 

The RD800 doesn't have an arpeggiator at all, but I think combined with your voicing ideas, perhaps I can slice four layers (in 16 slices each) differently enough to sound alright.

 

||: D E :|| C | G | F | Bb | C | G | F |

layer 1 100100110010101
layer 2 010010001100010
layer 3 001001000001000
layer 4 011011001101010
         x  x     x

 

"1" means that the layer sounds during that slice, "0" means it doesn't.

Only two chords, C and G, have conflicting (overlapping) notes between two layers. I rigged it thinking that I would be playing mostly D and E major.

 

If I can use the same trick I postulated above for Baba O'Riley, I could probably pull this off... enter the slices as shown above in binary, and then use individual note voicing to make the following notes sound only on the following layers

 

layer 1: C D Eb G#

layer 2: E F#

layer 3: A Bb B

layer 4: G

 

 

....add the multi-octave thing like you allude to....this has promise...

 

[WesG]

Well, my slicer idea is a bust. The individual key voicing only works on pianos, and can only drop the output level by 6 or 8 dB.

 

Looks like I gotta buy or make something. Man, there must be something out there.

[WesG]

The nice thing about being really sick is you have lots of time to google. I think I see an Akai MPK Mini mk2 in my future.

 

Edit: No MIDI port! Back to drawing board.

[WesG]

Well, THIS is interesting -- https://midisizer.com/midigal/midiarp/

 

I'd have to make a case of some sort for it...but it might do exactly what I want out of the box.

[mate stubb]

How does one hook up a midi arpeggiator? Local off, kbd out to arp, arp out back to kbd in?

[WesG]

Yep! That seems to be how it will work. It's small and not too nasty to hook up (three cords), so it shouldn't impact my setup/teardown time much.

 

I talked to the developer, it's available now in a fully-built assembled case for $145 US plus shipping. Seems like a no-brainer.

 

The RD800 has a 'popcorn' style voice in it that I can probably use to get pretty close to the attacky square wave Nick Rhodes used. It should be convincing enough if I play around with it. RD800 is a ROMpler, but it lets me tweak ADSR as well as filter and cutoff. If I'm not happy with that, I'll probably look toward Marimba patches or something. Or even square wave patches, if the MidiArp can set the note length to be shorter than the arpegiation time.

 

Wes