Arpeggiator

The arpeggiator and scale controls

The arpeggiator turns held notes into patterns: multiple modes, scale awareness, an interval grid (octaves, chords, harmonizers, diatonic triads), and a rhythm layer with swing, probability, and Euclidean fill. It has a chord mode with strum, and doubles as a modulation source and a set of modulation destinations.

Hold a chord, press play, and the arp turns it into a rhythmic stream of notes. The defaults are simple (up, in time, one octave), so you can reach for depth only when you want it. The step sequencer (Grid mode) shares this same clock and rhythm engine; the note editor is where you program a fixed pitch pattern (Grid) or a free-timeline clip (Free).

Modes and direction

Five modes decide how Aconite walks the notes you hold:

Mode	What it does
Up	Ascending through your held notes
Down	Descending
Up-Down	Up then back down
Random	A shuffled order, consistent within a pass
As Played	The order you pressed the keys

Octaves (1 to 4) extends the pattern upward by whole octaves, so a two-note hold at Octaves 3 becomes a six-step pattern that spans three registers.

Shaping the Random draw: DISTRIBUTION

In Random mode a small DISTRIBUTION cluster appears on the arp row (it stays hidden in the other modes, since it only shapes the random draw). Instead of a flat coin-flip, these three controls bend which held note the arp reaches for:

Mutate sets how much the random sequence repeats itself. Fully left, the arp locks onto a repeating loop of picks (a random riff that keeps coming back); fully right, it draws fresh every step; in between, it slowly mutates a phrase you can still recognise. This turns “random” from never-repeating noise into a musical, evolving pattern.
Spread narrows or widens the draw. Low Spread pulls the picks toward the centre of your held range; high Spread lets it reach the full span.
Bias leans the draw low or high, so the arp favours the bottom or the top of your held notes.

At their defaults these do nothing (a plain, even shuffle), so a Random patch you already have is unchanged until you reach for them.

Modulate the draw. Mutate, Spread, and Bias are also modulation destinations (under the Arp group), so an LFO or envelope can move them while the arp runs. Drift Bias with a slow LFO to let the note-cluster centre wander up and down the held range, breathe Spread to open and close the draw over a phrase, or ease Mutate to loosen a locked riff into fresh territory over time, all hands-free.

Rate and gate

Rate runs in two modes:

Sync: tempo-locked to your DAW, subdivided by the value you choose (eighth notes, sixteenth notes, dotted values, and so on).
Free: an absolute speed in steps per second, independent of any clock, so a pattern floats on its own.

Gate controls how much of each step the note actually sounds. A short Gate chops notes into staccato hits; a full Gate plays each note into the next for a legato feel.

Seq Trigger is the arp’s live-playing trick: set it to Run, and the arp cycles hands-free at the scale root without a key held. Hold (the default) instead gates the pattern from the keys you hold, so it stops when you lift your fingers. In Run you can still tap a new root note to shift the whole pattern: useful for bass arps you want to play both hands free. (This is distinct from the Latch voice play mode, which simply sustains held notes.)

Scale awareness: stay in key

Give the arp a musical key and it keeps every note legal.

Root and Scale set the key. The scale menu covers Chromatic, Major, Minor, the modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Locrian), Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor, Major and Minor Pentatonic, Blues, and Whole Tone, plus a set of exotic and symmetric scales, and a fully editable Custom mask. The exotic and symmetric scales, sitting just before Custom, are:
- Phrygian Dom — a flamenco / Middle-Eastern colour (the fifth mode of harmonic minor).
- Hungarian Min — cinematic, with two augmented seconds (harmonic minor with a raised fourth).
- Lydian Dom — a bright “overtone” or acoustic scale.
- Hirajoshi — a Japanese koto pentatonic.
- Augmented — a six-note symmetric scale alternating minor thirds and half steps (a Whole Tone sibling).
- Dim H-W — an eight-note symmetric half-whole diminished scale that plays over a dominant 7♭9.
- Dim W-H — an eight-note symmetric whole-half diminished scale.
Snap to key pulls any out-of-key note to the nearest scale tone, so nothing plays wrong even when you are scrambling for chords live.
Scale-walk modes (Scale Up / Scale Down / Scale Up-Down) turn the lowest held note into the start of a melodic run through the scale. Hold one key for a scale run; hold a chord to set where the walk begins.
Transpose shifts the whole pattern by scale degrees, not raw semitones: a “+2” stays diatonic wherever you are. Because Transpose is a modulation destination, an LFO or macro can sweep it for automatic chord progressions without ever leaving the key.

The interval set

One grid of 13 cells decides which intervals stack from the notes you hold. The scale says which notes are legal; the interval grid says which intervals to actively build.

Each interval has two switches:

Unit: Degree follows the scale, so a “third” is whatever major or minor quality that scale degree produces. Semitone is an exact interval, which can step outside the key; pair it with Snap to pull it back.
From: Held stacks the interval on every note in your chord for dense clusters that follow the voicing. Root stacks on the lowest held note only, so a single key gives a defined voicing that transposes cleanly as you move.

One grid covers three jobs at once: stacking octaves (exactly what the Octaves control does), adding harmonizer voices above a held chord, and building diatonic triads from a single key; degrees 1, 3, 5 From Root give you an arpeggiated in-key triad anywhere you play.

The interval grid applies to the held-note modes. Scale-walk modes and Grid mode carry their own pitch models, so the grid hides itself when it does not apply.

Graded odds: make a note or interval fire less than always

Both the KEY grid (the per-pitch-class degrees) and the INTERVALS grid can carry per-cell firing odds. A cell is not just on or off: each one holds a percentage, and that percentage is the chance the note or interval actually plays.

On the KEY grid, a cell’s odds are the chance that pitch class sounds when it comes up: pull a degree down to, say, 40% and that note drops out of the pattern most of the time, thinning the melody around it while the rest of the key stays solid.
On the INTERVALS grid, a cell’s odds are the chance that interval is stacked: set a 7th to 30% and the harmony sometimes voices the extension and sometimes leaves it out, so the chord breathes instead of repeating the same stack every time.

Every cell defaults to 100% (always fires), which is exactly the plain on/off behaviour, so nothing changes until you dial an odds down. The controls on a graded cell:

Drag up or down to set the odds.
Click to flip the cell in or out entirely (mask it off, or bring it back).
Double-click to reset it to 100%.
Scroll over it to nudge the odds.

A gear-menu preference, Graded odds: Heat / Fill, chooses how the odds are drawn on the grid, either as a heat shade across the whole cell or as a rising fill. Combined with the arp’s Probability and Distribution controls, per-cell odds let you compose a pattern that is mostly a fixed melody but loosens in exactly the places you choose.

Rhythm: swing, probability, Euclidean fill

A shared rhythm layer shapes the timing across every mode:

Swing delays the off-beat steps for groove.
Probability sets the per-step chance a step fires; a failed roll leaves a rest, thinning the pattern naturally.
Euclidean fill spreads a set number of hits evenly across a cycle of steps: 3 hits in 8 gives the tresillo, 5 in 8 gives the cinquillo. Setting the cycle length differently from the pattern length produces polymeter.

Probability and Euclidean fill decide whether a step sounds; Swing decides when.

These gates are independent — a step fires only if it passes the Probability roll and lands on a Euclidean hit slot. In Grid mode the master Probability goes further: it multiplies each step’s own Chance, and a Conditional trig adds a third gate, so a step sounds only when all of them pass. See the step sequencer for how the full stack works together.

Chord mode and strum

Chord flips the arp from one-note-at-a-time to firing the whole note pool together on each step: same held notes, interval set, and scale-snap, played as a rhythmic chord stab. The same clock, gate, swing, probability, and Euclidean fill drive it.

Strum spreads those chord notes across time:

Time is the spread amount. In Sync mode it is a fraction of the step, so the strum tightens as you speed up, the way a real strummed chord behaves. In Free mode it is an absolute time in milliseconds. The gate automatically extends to cover a wide strum, so the tail of a slow strum is never cut short.
Direction: Up (low to high), Down (high to low), Up-Down (alternates each step), As Played, or Random (a fresh shuffle each step).

Strum Time is a modulation destination, so a slow LFO can breathe the chord wider and tighter over time. Chord mode applies to the held-note modes; Grid mode keeps its own pitch model.

To play a whole chord progression under the arp from one held key, rather than stabbing a single held chord, see the chord lane.

When Chord mode is active, Aconite automatically switches to polyphonic voicing so the full note stack rings together, even if the patch was previously set to a mono mode.

The arp as a modulator

The arp exposes live data as modulation sources you can route through the modulation matrix:

Arp Step: the pattern position, a staircase that advances with the clock. Route it to filter cutoff for a rhythmic filter sweep that tracks the pattern.
Arp Velocity: the velocity of the current note, carrying any accents you have set.
Arp Gate: high while a note sounds, low between notes. Route it to any parameter for a pulsing modulation that breathes with the rhythm.

And the arp takes modulation in from the same matrix:

Arp Root: automate the key centre with an LFO to drift the pattern through keys over time.
Arp Transpose: move the pattern diatonically from another source for programmatic chord progressions.
Arp Strum: automate strum width for evolving, organic chord attacks.