stupid (albeit burning) question - is it arpeggiation?

[blueorpheus]

Hi - this may (probably is) be a stupid, hard to articulate question, but I'll ask;

how does one get those bouncy, throbbing sounds/meters / arpeggiations in Sonar?! I love the Pet Shop Boys type of classically-influenced techno-dance - I'm a "classically trained" pianist with Sonar 1.3.1, a JV-1010, a VSS 1880, and a borrowed Ensoniq workstation (no manual, just use it as a MIDI controller).

I've read everything I can get my hands on about arpeggiation, but its STILL horribly unpredicatable as to what will come out from chord / octave structures. Try to create bouncy background throbs that come out sounding like brittle, out of line tinkling. At the very least, I'd like to learn how to create even those basic throbbing octave bass lines, that go (forgive the description;

root / octave octave, root / octave octave, root / octave, octave (change key) root / octave octave, root / octave octave, root / octave, octave, and so on

New Order, PSB, etc, play these wonderful, filtered, chord-based sweeps, parsed into 16th or 32nd notes that map PRECISELY to the beat - I'm trying to concieve of an approach that will let me get my ideas out in a similiar way.

Sorry, if this a dumb question - RTFM or "here's a quarter - buy and learn how to use a real synthesizer" would be valid replies ( ! ) - but is anyone else out there doing the same kind of work, and did you go through the same learning curve?

( I'm a single dad - not an incredible amount of time to go through all the variations I can dream up to test while I'm at work!)

thanks

blueorpheus

 

[blueorpheus]

hmmmmm

interesting - I asked this same question in the yahoo.egroup

...and actually got replies...

 

[AlChuck]

I've only played with it a very little bit; it has theoretical interest for me but so far I haven't wanted to try it badly enough to make it worth doing more than scratching the surface.

As to the lack of replies, it might be that the people that do this stuff don't use Cakewalk to do it... they use the arpeggiators on the synths themselves, or Mac-based stuff...

 

[johnhoe]

If you have the Tassman synthesizer dxi (given with Sonar 1 XL) you can load up a synth arpeggiators that may be something like what u need.
Go to load banks (first icon on 2nd row) and load up "monophonic", choose "arpegiatass". If you want to know how to trigger it from midi just get back to me.

 

[blueorpheus]

thanks - I'll try it

thanks - I'll give it a try this weekend - I'm bach'ing it Sat. nite!

robin