BlueARP VST Arpeggiator development - let's discuss! (Apple M1 ready, 4K)

[phreaque]

For basic use of changing the sync with a mouse it's probably not that noticeable, but it means you can't really use changing speed via MIDI as a performance technique as it sounds out of time/glitchy every time you change. It's a shame as it's one of my favourite things to do with an arp and something BlueArp seems very suited to otherwise.

No shame with a freeware

Changing the sync resolution requires the engine to recompute the host BPM & adjust to the time grid, this causes a little hiccup.

The correct way to achieve what you're trying to do, is by:

1. making 2 programs (presets)
2. each with the needed sync settings.
3. Head to the [Current chain / program sequence] section.
4. Assign 1st program to chain 1, and the 2nd program to chain 2.
5. then use the [Chain] feature to trigger these programs.

You can load & use the attached bank to have a better idea on how to it works.

program chain - BlueARP_Bank.zip

[sdp6000]

Haha, yes fair point

Ok, thanks for confirming. Good to know that chaining is a workaround for the bpm glitch, athough it's less suitable for my use as I tend to use it playing live in a less pre-planned way - adapting existing patterns gradually and switching between parameters. For now I've figured out a workaround with a quantizing plugin in my DAW.

Is there any shortcut way to copy/paste presets? This would make chaining, etc. more viable for this kind of thing, currently it's a bit fiddly with multiple clicks of drop downs to save variations of patterns.

[phreaque]

Haha, yes fair point

Ok, thanks for confirming. Good to know that chaining is a workaround for the bpm glitch, athough it's less suitable for my use as I tend to use it playing live in a less pre-planned way - adapting existing patterns gradually and switching between parameters. For now I've figured out a workaround with a quantizing plugin in my DAW.

Is there any shortcut way to copy/paste presets? This would make chaining, etc. more viable for this kind of thing, currently it's a bit fiddly with multiple clicks of drop downs to save variations of patterns.

No worries at all

The program chain is very useful tool & crafted especially for the live performance purpose.
You can assign the [Current chain] to any knob / button on your MIDI controller to switch between different programs on fly.

For shortcuts implementation, sadly that wasn't planned initially, but hopefully in the future it can be added.

[sdp6000]

Ok thanks again. The chains do look really useful once you have the multiple programs set up.

It'd be great if you could add a quicker way to copy/paste programs sometime in future. A keyboard/MIDI shortcut or even just small copy/paste buttons in the UI would make this a lot more usable, at least for me.

Then again I'm one of those annoying types who tries to avoid using the mouse as much as possible when making music so small menu trees always derail me a little bit

[sdp6000]

Just an additional bit of feedback on the off-time note issue, after using it for a while it looks like this occurs when switching patterns manually as well (even when the patterns are using the same sync setting). Often when switching patterns BlueArp will sound a note at the instant the pattern changes, if you are doing this manually then the note will often be unquantised/off-time unless you switch patterns exactly on the beat.

I think a much preferable behaviour if it was possible in a future update would be for BlueArp to not play any note until the next quantized step after the pattern/sync setting/etc. is changed.

I know that using chains avoid this by switching patterns on a quantized step but hopefully the above is a fairly quick fix that would enable all the arp notes to stay in time when switching things manually for those of use who like changing things in realtime.

[BertTRP]

Hi,

Is there any chance to know if substituting the multiple layers drop-down menu for the CuProgram parameter could potentially be implemented in the future in order to allow better usage in Ableton?

See this post for the details:
viewtopic.php?p=8707311#p8707311

Thank you in advance!

[sdp6000]

Thanks again for creating such an amazing tool. I've been using it a lot more and a lot of my setup is based around (many!) instances of this plugin now

After using it for a while I have a few more suggestions for future improvements if any of these were practical/easy to implement in future updates:
1. Add slower tempo options - currently the lowest is 1/4 but BlueArp could be really useful for triggering other pattern/arrangement changes, etc. and it would be great if it could be made to run at 1/2 or 1/1 speeds.
2. Finer control over gate times. Multiplying/dividing by two has limited use, could this have a setting similar to the Velocity scale to use percentage values of the main gate time?
3. Change thru behaviour so that it doesn't change the channel - currently any notes set to 'pass thru/no arping' are rechannelized to the midi out channel and it would be useful to have an option to pass them through unchanged.
4. Add an option to always start from step 1 in 'restart on'. Beat0 mode takes the song position from the DAW so can start longer patterns on 5, 9, etc. depending on the DAW position. This can be a bit confusing/limiting at times and it would be great to be able to force the arp to always start at 1 on a new measure/bar.
5. Add 'polyphonic' option to Channel grid. It'd be useful to be able to send a step to more than one channel, although I appreciate this might be tricky to add in the UI as channel is shared with gate time.
6. As mentioned before, having small copy/paste/insert/delete buttons for Program in the UI would save a lot of menu mouse-ing (currently 9 clicks to copy/insert a pattern to a new slot). I don't think these are needed for the other menu sections, but as BlueArp auto-saves programs there's is a lot of copy/pasting of them in general use and this would really improve it. Keyboard shortcuts would be fine for this too.

Apologies for the big list! I think I only have so many requests because it's such a great plugin and I use it a lot now

[BertTRP]

Does anyone know if there will be still updates for BlueArp?

[phreaque]

Does anyone know if there will be still updates for BlueArp?

Eventually, yes, but not much & not very soon.

[graywolf2004]

Hi everyone. My big thanks to phreaque for keeping this thread alive. Yep, Im not abandoning this project, but last year I was focused mostly on the hardware Bluearp. I have a big update to the plugin as a work in progress, hope to roll out somewhere jan-feb 24. I did a quick scan of the thread, quite a few dood ideas, I will probably take some of them.

[arturrembe]

Hi, what about a Linux version. I will switch to Linux in 2024.

[Fannon]

Nice to hear you're still working on it!

Speaking of ideas: Would it be a possibility to make Bluearp MPE ready?
The issue currently is that it outputs everything in one (chosen) channel. But for MPE, the input note and the resulting arpeggiated output notes would need to be kept in the same channel. And then some of the MIDI CC messages (global or per-note / per-channel) properly passed on.

For example the Bitwig Arpeggiator get's this right.

[Chris-S]

Hi, small typo in the settings page: atfertouch msg instead of aftertouch msg.
Version: 2.3.8

[graywolf2004]

Hi, small typo in the settings page: atfertouch msg instead of aftertouch msg.
Version: 2.3.8

Thanks, fixed in v.2.5.0. It is the final stage, will release soon.
Lots of changes there, some of them based on the feedback here, I've read all the recent posts.

[graywolf2004]

Hi, what about a Linux version. I will switch to Linux in 2024.

I'm considering this some day, maybe somewhere 2025, not earlier. But not yet in my toDo list, it is a lot of work, and one more PITA in addition to OSX version.