Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Dave Phillips looks at arpeggiators for Linux. "An arpeggio is a musical technique whereby the notes of a chord are played in succession rather than all at once. The order of the chord notes in this succession may follow a strict set of rules or they may be played in purely random sequence. A device that acts upon a chord in this manner is known as an arpeggiator."

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Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 11, 2010 20:59 UTC (Thu) by alvieboy (guest, #51617) [Link] (15 responses)

I am somewhat confused.

Why would I need an arpeggiator ? I am a guitar player (acoustic classical) and do write my compositions using lilypond, which can even generate MIDI files from my partiture.

What is this used for ? Can't you write arpeggios in rosegarden and such ?

Seriously, I missed the point completely.

Álvaro

Arpeggiator uses

Posted Mar 11, 2010 22:50 UTC (Thu) by samlh (subscriber, #56788) [Link]

Arpeggiators are commonly used in live performance, and for easy automatic creation of arpeggios. Such programs allow you to create arpeggios following the same pattern for different chords, faster than manual creation. They are most often used in conjunction with a synthesizer.

The program reviewed in the article is not entirely suited for live performance, but I am interested in the other two programs he plans to review.

Perhaps they would not be useful for you, but they are an interesting music creation tool.

Samuel Harrington

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 11, 2010 23:11 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Think "burbling synthesizers" and 80s music.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 12, 2010 8:24 UTC (Fri) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link] (12 responses)

Why would I need an arpeggiator ? I am a guitar player (acoustic classical) and do write my compositions using lilypond.

There's your mistake. You've taken the time and effort to learn to play a musical instrument and read and write music. You are not the intended audience for these programs.

They're mobility scooters for the musically bereft.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 12, 2010 10:12 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

Unjust. Some of us simply do not have the natural talent involved, and we can study reading and
writing music and playing instruments and singing and still be below the level we need to make the
music we can imagine real. Like people with Parkinson's disease. Computers can be a great aid to
such people to fulfill their creative needs.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 12, 2010 12:39 UTC (Fri) by sbakker (subscriber, #58443) [Link] (9 responses)

They're mobility scooters for the musically bereft.

I agree. I would go even further and argue that musical instruments are crutches for the lazy and vocally challenged. I mean, let's face it: who needs a guitar (or a tuba) when you've got a perfectly good set of vocal cords sitting right there in your throat? And for that matter, reading and writing music are for the untalented plods that don't have perfect memory and cannot even get it right in one go.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 12, 2010 13:28 UTC (Fri) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link] (8 responses)

That's a really unapt analogy. Musical instruments make a different sound, and have widely different ranges and timbres, than vocal chords and, of course, many of them are polyphonic. Arpeggiators do not make a different sound, they merely choose the ordering and timings for notes based on guidelines the composer gives them. But arranging the timings and orders of those notes is 99% of what is difficulat about writing an interesting composition.

You sketch a chord progression, and the software fills in the difficult bits -- like producing a film treatment and then buying some script-writing software that uses bits of old film dialogue to turn it into a screenplay. (I'm fairly certain this is how they wrote Avatar).

If you want to make a vocal analogy, its with "autotune" -- it lowers the bar to participation, by removing the elements of the craft that require skill, talent and/or dedication. In some ways, that's not a bad thing -- but in some ways it most definitely is.

It has a similar relationship to composing as Guitar Hero has to musicianship. I like Guitar Hero, but being good at it is not the same as being a musician.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 12, 2010 13:53 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (6 responses)

On the one hand we have the arpeggiator, a practical tool for procedurally generating parts of a musical composition (if it's just an arpeggiator it won't generate your percussion, for starters) and on the other we have Guitar Hero, a rhythm action video game played with the hands instead of the feet. Learning to make good use of an arpeggiator can be a meaningful step towards becoming a composer; learning to play Guitar Hero well isn't a meaningful step towards becoming a musician.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 13, 2010 19:21 UTC (Sat) by alvieboy (guest, #51617) [Link] (5 responses)

Learning music in the first place *is* the key for you being a composer.

Then you can use all sort of tools (and even instruments). You don't need to know how to play any instrument to become a composer. You don't need to be a composer to play any instrument. That's the beauty of it.

I feel we're getting to the point that musicians/composers:

1) Don't know music
2) Don't play any musical instrument

That scares the hell out of me.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 14, 2010 15:49 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

It doesn't scare the hell out of me. In the end, such 'composers' will
either produce music that sounds good (unlikely, but possible), in which
csae knowledge of music was never that important after all; or, more
likely, they'll produce horrible noise and nobody will listen to it.

Fundamentally all humans who are not tone-deaf or otherwise medically
deficient have some kind of ability with music: it's innate. Vast numbers
of children tootle out extemporized tunes. I see no problem at all with
making it easier for people to produce music without needing to learn as
much first. Complaining about this smacks of elitism to me.

Just mechanical aids

Posted Mar 14, 2010 21:54 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

I understood that they are just a mechanical aid for the less challenging and more tedious tasks of writing music. You have to know music to instruct the arpeggiator to output what you want. So, why not.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 15, 2010 22:24 UTC (Mon) by alvieboy (guest, #51617) [Link] (1 responses)

" Fundamentally all humans who are not tone-deaf or otherwise medically deficient have some kind of ability with music: it's innate. Vast numbers of children tootle out extemporized tunes. "

I have to disagree. Actually those who exhibit disabilities in some areas are extremely good at music and other opposed areas. For example, invisuals. I know a few, they have excellent musical abilities, with no exception. And they also play musical instruments.

" I see no problem at all with making it easier for people to produce music without needing to learn as much first. "

I don't either, as long as that really helps them understanding music and improving their knowledge.

" Complaining about this smacks of elitism to me. "

Sorry if I gave that impression. I'm just trying to understand the reason.

Many friends of mine are able to play a musical instrument. None of them knows anything about music. Why ? They don't care. They know enough to play a little on their own, compose their own musics, always focusing on the instrument.

However, musical knowledge (notation, instruments, so on...) gives you a wider range of artistic abilities. I can only compose for a few instruments, those I played myself. I wish I knew more, I wish I knew everything about instruments, notations, so on. I do not.

I had music lessons. On public schools. Those helped me a lot. Here, in Portugal, public schools teach music, at least the very basic of it. Those impaired are often given even more teachings about the subject.

I hate bad music (99% what comes out of any radio station unfortunately). I am a lousy performer, and a lousy composer. But, each new thing I learn about it, each new technique I use on the instrument, makes me feel happy.

Álvaro

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 16, 2010 10:13 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

I don't know what music radio is like in Portugal, but in the UK it mostly isn't so much bad as mediocre. If it was bad, it might have more merit.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 22, 2010 22:46 UTC (Mon) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link]

Yeah, just look at how CasioChord ruined everything. Oh, wait, it didn't.

If anything, tools that make the basics easier raise the bar for the true artists, because they can spend their talents on the truly difficult parts rather than get bogged down with the mundane.

Sure, it also increases the pool of participation, and yes, you'll get a lot more of schlock in there. Just as high-level languages and app-builders allow plenty of people who have little business writing software to produce some truly horrid code and ship it, many of these same tools allow experts to focus on the truly difficult bits rather than get bogged down in unnecessary noise. Very few of us program in machine code any more.

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 12, 2010 14:21 UTC (Fri) by nlucas (subscriber, #33793) [Link]

It seems to me you fell victim of Poe's Law [1].
The OP missed the <sarcasm></sarcasm> tags.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6408927/Intern...

Linux Arpeggiators, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Posted Mar 16, 2010 13:16 UTC (Tue) by jrigg (guest, #30848) [Link]

If only The Who had learned to play their instruments back in the day. They wouldn't have had to use an ARP synth arpeggiator on songs like Baba O'Riley.

Seriously, a tool is only a tool. Those with talent are likely to make better use of it than those without.