How well does the FlexPhraser support your Arpeggios?
- I don’t care about the FlexPhraser or any Arpeggiator functionality, yet won’t screw up the vote of those to whom it may concern
- I mainly use the factory set of arpeggios and they sound fantastic
- I sometimes use the factory set of arpeggios but they do not sound natural enough to motivate or inspire me
- I never liked the arpeggiator, don’t use it anymore
- If I could just record my groove/riff via MIDI (EPiano, Guitar, Accordion, Flute/Sax) as if it was a loop and then play around with it live in new harmonies
- Hold on, so I could import the instrument riff from another MIDI file and have that play to my live input in harmony - COOL WHERE IS THAT FEATURE?!
- The groove quantize import does exactly what I expect and is all I need
- Starting visually with a discrete 32 step sequencer, extending note lengths or merging several visually with my mouse and then importing a MIDI snippet to quantize my step sequence to that groove is completely inefficient and never produced a natural sounding result. I want a programmable arpeggiator, but not like it is now
0 voters
First of all, thank you for enhancing your acoustic instruments by honest extension of the underlying sound sample content, that is more than welcome. And the new wavetable designer seems to become a wonderful option to customize bread and butter sounds or even recorded samples. One feature though would need an improvement to make the whole package sound more natural, less techie.
I’d like to import mono-timbral, polyphonic MIDI tracks into the Halion FlexPhraser arpeggiator.
With the current 32step sequencer I always end in kita rave. The addition of a 3rd oscillator does not conceal that robotic feel well.
Say, I recorded my britpop acoustic guitar riff Guitar-to-MIDI and now want to use it for relaxed songwriting and experimentation with chord progressions or with rythmic chops. That riff might contain overlapping notes, even intentional chords, e.g.
"C1+E, G, A, C2, E, G"
Here, “C1+E” means they are played “concurrently”. I want such a MIDI snippet imported into Halion Arpeggiator as
"1 +2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 3"
with the exact timing as in my MIDI snippet (and velocity of course). Then, as in your current implementation, I may edit or randomize, e.g.
"1 +2, 3, P, 5, P, 3"
To encode the played notes as numbers, also for apparently concurrent or overlapping chord notes, there is a numbering order already technically defined by the MIDI protocol (super-dense time).
If someone wanted “C1” encoded as “2” and “E” as “1”, he could just change their listing order in the MIDI snippet, before importing that into the arpeggiator.
I tried to achieve the same with a Cubase Chord Track / Arranger Mode / Cycle Track, but when a track follows live input harmonies, Cubase updates that track destructively, repetitively. After very short experimentation (playing the same loop/arpeggio) through tens of harmony progressions, the original arpeggio is crippled to triads or even powerchords, no chance to play 7s any longer, everything sounds dull. All that track version handling in Cubase is really great for what it is named: versioning of takes and comparison of arrangements at later stages. Cubase is too distracting with its sequencer perspective when I want to play around with grooves during early experimental songwriting.
If Halion offered MIDI playback as an Arpeggiator, that would obsolete GarageBand LiveLoops / Ableton SessionView / Yamaha MobileSequencer. Halion would be superior to those tools, by “arpeggios” (aka “loops”, “riffs”, “phrases”) following sophisticated arbitrarily complex harmonies.
Ableton cannot interprete my input as harmonies for further transformations.
GarageBand is limited to diatonic transposition and minor-major transforms.
Halion has so much potential here (!!!), because it does NOT try to interprete my live input as harmonies, but instead numbers the notes as I play them and maps the order of notes into the arpeggio accurately. The current “number mapping” of arpeggiator steps according to what note I play 1st, then 2nd, then 3rd, is all that is needed. It makes Halion follow my live input without overruling my intentions (“hey lets make that sus4 a major, that’s all I know”). And gives me so much live control over an arpeggio’s playback variations, that is velocities and order of notes. So much potential. Set it free, guys!
Please let me record my own arpeggios from real instruments via MIDI, keep their timing, map them numerically to the order of notes played during live input.
Thank you.
p.s.: VirSyn Addictive Synth Pro has 4 cursors that chase each other visually through a single arpgeggio pattern. 
Please don’t follow into that direction. The results sound like a 5 years old boy sitting in an SUV and randomly pushing buttons. If a grown-up needs complexity in layered arpeggiators, with Halion he can layer 999 tracks, each backed by an individual/reusable Halion Arpeggiator pattern, and each individually responding more or less to note ranges, velocities, after touch, expression pedal, whatever …