For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Thread starter charlieclouser Start date Jun 10, So, for decades Logic has had a nifty arpeggiator available in the Environment, but its UI is pretty spartan. It's a simple matter to set it up so that it's activated by the sustain pedal or any other incoming MIDI CC and you can have your Mod Wheel control the velocity of the outgoing notes.

This makes performing percussion parts like hi-hats, shakers, or ticky-tacks a breeze and lots of fun. This is annoying. There is a reasoning behind this - it makes it possible to adjust or automate the settings of the Arpeggiator after the fact. But for simple repeating 16th note synth or percussion patterns, most of the time I just want to directly record those 16th notes into the track in one pass. This will prevent Logic from automatically creating and deleting some of the objects we need to create and use.

Double-click its icon to open its settings panel, and make sure the checkbox "Device is online" is turned ON. This is how you turn it on when you need tor off when you don't want it cluttering up the joint. In the Ports list you may have only one item, "Bus 1", as shown in the pic, or you may have more. For what we're doing we only need one Bus, but if you're already using IAC Busses for other stuff, make a new one and call it "Arp Bus" or something.

We need a whole bus to ourselves for this. If you've customized your template quite a bit, this layer may have a different name, but then you'll know where to find it. In its simplest state, there should be a cable running from a port on Physical Input probably "Sum" over to Sequencer Input. We're going to do some cabling now. This will create a normal Instrument Channel Strip, but Logic may switch to the Layer that contains your other Software Instruments and add this new one all the way to the right of your existing Instruments.

Turn the Velocity knob all the way down and insure that the settings match those circled in red in this pic: 8 - Still in the Arpeggiator UI, in the bottom section go to the fourth pane, called "Controller" and set "1 Mod Wheel" to "Velocity Base" as shown in the pic below.

Optionally, you can set "64 Sustain" to "Latch" as shown in the pic; this will give you sustain pedal latching. Set the rate to 16th Notes or whatever you desire, and feel free to mess with whatever other settings you like. Since we turned off "Automatic management of channel strip objects" it won't disappear from the Environment. But you'll probably want to leave it in a Track so you can get to it to adjust the Arpeggiator settings. That's why you should leave it assigned to a dummy Track in the Main Window.

Now click in the empty background of the Environment Window to de-select all objects, then click on the cable running from Physical Input to Sequencer Input and delete it. If anything other than that cable disappears, hit Undo, carefully de-select everything and re-select JUST the cable, and try again.

Now, all MIDI input has been disconnected from Logic's sequencer engine, but don't fear, we're going to repair it. On the right side of the Physical Input, find the little triangle that corresponds to the MIDI port for your main keyboard. Drag a cable from that little triangle to the left side of the Cable Switcher object. Now, drag a cable from the little triangle at the upper right of the Cable Switcher object to Sequencer Input. When that's done, a second triangle should appear below the first.

I use Button 3 style since it can be resized easily. This allows the new Button to control the Cable Switcher. Operate the button and you should see the little routing diagram in the Cable Switcher change to show its input connected to one output and then the other as you toggle the button.

You should be done. Toggling the new Button should effectively turn a 16th-note repeating arpeggio on and off. When the toggle is in "bypass arp" mode, no data comes back from the IAC Arp Bus and the keyboard is connected directly to the Sequencer Input. Find a cool velocity-sensitive synth bass or percussion, hold a key, and enjoy the instant gratification.

If things don't work as described, here is a pic of how the cabling should look: And here are the settings in the Parameters box for the Cable Switcher and the Button object:.

Click to read more I'm curious, what is the utility of having the actual note intervals of the arp recorded directly to the track? Simple MIDI patterns like this can usually be spit out by pattern generators, no? If you really wanted to, couldn't you just print to audio and slice at transients? I would imagine it would be faster this way especially if there is a ton of cc data.

Just perform it in and have the power to edit everything from notes to all the other data. This makes life easier for keyboard players and has launched countless one-finger keyboard virtuosos.

Essentially you hold down a chord, and the arpeggiator will rotate through the chord using the selected algorithm. Logic Pro X has an arpeggiator built in that can be used on any midi track, even a drum track! First create a new session, select Software Instrument, and pick an instrument of your choice. Go ahead and play a 4 or 8 bar progression that you can use for this example or just hold down one chord for a long time if you prefer.

Check out this article if you need help with chord progression generation. The up arrow means that it will arpeggiate up.

The next button, Outside In, gets a bit more complex. Now select variation 2. This sequence starts on the 2nd note, and then goes down to the bottom note.

It then goes up and plays the 3rd and 4th note upward as normal. Picture starting on your index finger, then playing your thumb, then back to the index finger, playing the sequence upward normally. Variation 3 is a bit similar to 2, but starts on the 3rd note. It then drops down to the bottom note and plays upward, but skips the 3rd note that it already played. Not that hard if you think about it. Variation 4 is a bit weird. This one starts on the root, goes up to the 3rd, down to the 2nd, and back to the 3rd, ignoring the 4th altogether.

So thumb, middle, index, middle.

Logic Pro X: Extracting MIDI Plug-in Data

Darren Burgos on Nov 11, in Logic Pro 3 comments. Based on the parameters you set, it can play notes in sequence up, down, up and down, across multiple octaves, and much more. When you go to record the arpeggio, it's a bit of a let down though. The actual notes it creates are not directly recorded, only your held chords or single notes. In this article I'll show you two ways of capturing the output of the arpeggiator.

One method is actually built right into the arpeggiator itself! Let's get started. Hold a chord down and watch the small icon that looks like steps in the top left corner. Now release the chord. There's your arpeggiation! Now you might be wondering why it's such a small slice, but remember what the arpeggiator is actually doing… it's repeating the chord by playing the individual notes in sequence over and over again.

To play the arpeggiation for as long as you intended, simply loop the region for as many bars as necessary. Remove or Bypass Arpeggiator now, since you're done with it! Keep in mind, when you're dragging out multiple arpeggios, position your mouse onto the next unoccupied bar.

Arpeggiator's MIDI drag places its patterns on the start of a bar only. If say the patterns you're dragging are a half bar in length, and you position the second pattern in the middle of a bar, you'll overlap the dragged region onto the first. In the steps above, we simply used the default arpeggiation, but feel free to change any parameter on the arpeggiator… MIDI drag will work with any pattern Arpeggiator creates.

For example the default pattern simply plays 16th notes starting from the low note to the high note, if we change Arpeggiator to a more complex pattern like up and down, with an octave range of 4, the pattern you drag will be longer. OK, so now we know we can manually piece the Arpeggiator together with the drag button, but what about simply capturing the output of an already built chord structure, or for that matter, any MIDI FX output not just Arpeggiator?

Virtual or physical, Logic can't tell the difference. First, we'll need to enable the IAC driver. You only have to do this once, as your Mac will remember this through restarts and shutdowns. Double-click the IAC Driver icon in the window that appears.

Now that we've enabled the virtual path, let's go back to Logic. Duplicate the channel strip with the arpeggiator you want to capture. Click on the External Instrument to open it. This is an important step. Your original chord progression on the intended instrument will be used to trigger the duplicated Arpeggiator.

This duplicated Arpeggiator sends the arp pattern to the External Instrument, that is then sending its output to the IAC driver! It's actually a lot simpler than it sounds! We're nearly there. Click back onto the original track, and bypass the Arpeggiator since you'll no longer need it. Allow it to play all the way through… as it records, you should see the individual notes being captured.

Once captured, you should immediately bypass the External Instrument and it's Arpeggiator since it's output will continue to send even when the track is muted! Depending on the speed of your Mac, how complex the song your working in is, and other factors, you might have to quantize the resulting captured MIDI. More articles by this author. Darren started making music on computers when he was a teenager in His first computer was an Amiga, and when he realized the power of computer-based production, his addiction for making electronic music began.

Darren switched to Mac in and started using Logic Pro. He's been involved in many music projects over the years incl Read More. Create an account or login to get started! Audio is your ultimate daily resource covering the latest news, reviews, tutorials and interviews for digital music makers, by digital music makers.

Log In Create Account. A NonLinear Educating Company. In this tutorial Darren Burgos reveals two ways to capture its actual output. Darren Burgos More articles by this author. Related Videos. The Future of Podcasting is Spatial. Discussion Colin.

Great article - thanks! Well-explained and very useful. Yes indeed a great help for me too. I used this all the time in the old logic's environment window.

I've noticed that unfortunately in the controller section of the midi plug-ins Logic developers have skipped a number of available midi controllers, between 31 and 64 for instance. I need those however, since I'm working on third party self developed instruments that have their controller range in this zone. Is there a reason for doing so? Is there a way to bypass the problem?

After reading the brilliant article by Darren, I guess he's the man of the solution. Thanks for the article. Very useful. I wonder if it would be possible to capture multiple tracks simultaneously this way? Want to join the discussion? Featured Articles. Related Articles. Logic Pro Will it revolutionize the way we record and mix?

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