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Steps
The fingerprint
Seven numbers measured from the notes you just wrote, against the range this genre's arps sit in. Inside the band, it belongs. Outside it, the fixes below are the smallest edits that bring it back, each checked before it is offered.
Fixes
The cycle counter
On one held chord, with nothing evolving: how long until the pattern and the note cycle line up with the bar line again. The longer the cycle, the less the loop sounds like a loop.
Register and the bass
Arp notes under 165 Hz (E2 in Live) share the space the bass owns. Measured on the notes, and while it plays, on the arp's actual output after its high-pass.
Find me one
The generator writes 140 combos from the genre's grammar (rates, pattern shapes, pools, orders, accents, sounds), measures every one against the fingerprint, and keeps the eight that fit best and are most typical, with no two rhythms the same. Click one to hear it. Star the ones that hit.
Song sketch
Turn the combo on stage into a whole track. Orbit rewrites the same idea for every section: a thin, dark intro, a build with the automation climbing, the drop, a beatless break on a held sound, a second drop that changes a note every four bars, an outro. Then it measures each rewrite to check that it reads as that section. Play it through, click a section to put it on stage, or take the whole arrangement to Live as one MIDI file with a marker at every section.
The crate
Everything you starred, kept in this browser. Export them all at once as a ZIP of MIDI files (arp, chords and the Arpeggiator input for each), with a text file of every setting.
Take it to Ableton
The arp as MIDI with its swing, accents, slides and evolution (as CC automation), the chords and the Arpeggiator input on their own tracks, and the patch recipe for Serum 2 and for Live's own instruments.
MIDI
Audio
Rendered in your browser from the same synth you hear, two loops plus the tail. Good for sampling and for checking, but the real sound is the Serum 2 patch.
Sounds out
The patches as WAV files for Simpler, Sampler and Drum Rack: one note, a multisample, the chords of your progression or of the whole key as stabs, seamless loops and stems. Rendered in your browser from the synth you hear, at the current knobs.
One note
Render a note to see it here.
Multisample
The same patch every few semitones across the keyboard, so it stays natural when you play it far from its root. Each file is named by its note and carries it as its root key.
Every patch
All the patches as one-shots at C3, each at its own settings, with the Serum 2 recipe for each in a text file.
Chord stabs
Each chord as a one-shot on the current patch: put them on Drum Rack pads, or load one into Simpler and play it up and down the keyboard for the classic house "chord memory" trick.
Loops and stems
Exactly long, cut so they loop without a click: the tail of the last bar is already at the start. Drop them in Live with warp on and they sit on the grid.
In Live
- Simpler: drag the WAV onto an empty MIDI track. Simpler opens in Classic mode with the sample at C3; for the one-notes rendered at C3 that is the original pitch.
- One-Shot mode for stabs and hits that should ring out however short you play them; Classic for anything you hold.
- Sampler for the multisample: drop all the files into the Zone editor and set each zone's root key from its file name.
- Loops and stems: drag them into Arrangement at the session tempo with Warp on (Beats or Complex for the arp).
The 12 rules
What the arps at the top of the charts have in common, each one an A/B you can hear in the studio, with the number that changes. A breaks the rule, B keeps it.
Fourteen genres, fourteen jobs
The same arp means something different in each genre. Here is what it does, how it is measured and what to reach for.
How it works, and where it can be wrong
The model
An arp here is two cycles turning against each other. The note cycle is the pool (chord tones, scale, pentatonic, fifths…) put in an order. The step pattern says which 16ths (or 8ths, triplets, 32nds) play, which are accents, chord hits, pedal notes, ties, ratchets, slides or octave jumps. The cycle advances on each note (like Ableton's Arpeggiator) or on each step (like a hardware step sequencer). When their lengths differ, the pattern rotates against the bar: the cycle counter says how long it takes to come back.
Chords are voiced near the register and voice-led: each chord takes the inversion closest to the last one. Imported chords keep their own voicing, moved whole octaves to the register.
The measurements
Syncopation is the share of notes whose next stronger beat position has no note of its own. Kick clash is the share that start on a quarter note, where a four-on-the-floor kick sits. Leap is the average jump between consecutive notes (the top note of a chord hit). Length is the average note in 16ths. Swing is the off-16th delay as a percentage of the 8th, and only counts when notes land there. Measurements use the unswung grid and a still, four-bar loop.
The genre ranges were set from each genre's conventions and checked against every pattern in the bank: all of them sit inside their own genre's band, and the tests fail if one drifts out.
Limits
- The preview synth is a sketch of each patch, not the patch. Build the Serum 2 recipe for the real sound; that is where most of a riff's character comes from.
- The WAV samples come from the same preview synth: good for sketching, chord-memory tricks and Drum Rack, but the Serum 2 recipe is the real patch.
- The live keyboard needs Web MIDI (Chrome or Edge). The latency is the browser's: fine for choosing chords, not for tight performance.
- Fit says a combo belongs to the genre, not that it is good. Two combos with a fit of 100 can be a hit and a bore. Your ears decide; the fingerprint keeps you in the right room.
- Chord import reads pitch sets beat by beat. Fast passing notes and melodies on the same track are merged into the chords; pick the chord track when a file has several.
- Evolution lanes are exported as CC74 (cutoff), CC71 (resonance), CC75 (decay) and CC91 (reverb). Map them in Serum 2 with MIDI Learn on the macros, or to any device in Live.
- Ableton's Arpeggiator plays every step at one velocity with no rests; most patterns here need the MIDI export to be exact. The Arpeggiator card says which ones can be rebuilt with it.
- Bank patterns are original studies of each genre's conventions, written for this page. They are not transcriptions of anyone's record, and the artist names describe a direction, not a source.