In Ableton, the arpeggiator plugin has a “chord tigger” mode where you can have chords on a track and it outputs those chords in a rhythmic pattern. Similar to a trance gate, etc, but it outputs the chords as MIDI. Is there something similare in Cubase or does anyone have a recommendation of a VST. To be clear, I’m not trying to generate new chords (lots of arpeggiator plugins do that), but I’m trying to apply a rhythm to a currently existing chord progression and output that as MIDI.
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The first part is easily done with MIDIgate. The output part as MIDI, I don’t usually do it, so I can’t think of a way right now.
Here is a video that demonstrates the exact procedure.
Further edit: If it’s an arpeggiator you’re after, use Arpache.
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What gg above said.
Arpache is a midi effect insert
I’m outputting chords, not arpeggios. MIDIgate is just a midi controlled gate effect like I mentioned above, a standard trancegate. It doesn’t output the chords as MIDI.
I should clarify that I’m doing complex polyrhythmic rhythms that are multiple bars long, so while something like Cthulu can sort of do this, it’s limited to a 4 bar length and I can not for the life of me figure out how to chain the patterns together to make longer patterns.
How much polyrhythmic? Are we talking 7/8 over 4/4 or 15/16 over 4/4? If it’s so wild that the rhythms align very late (periodicity, is this a word?), I’d just render to audio and stretch to fit.
But I still don’t understand what you’re trying to do I’m afraid. Do you have sustained chords of great length that you want to chop up at certain periodic intervals?
Yes. Slowly changing polychords with notes that come in and go out all at different starting points. This is a 15 minute piece and fast complex vibraphone chords are playing those specific pitches of the chords, and it’s a very time consuming process to write the patterns in one measure at a time. This all becomes notation, so I’m not just trying to manipulate audio.
Basically, what I’m asking for is what I actually need: Have a chord progression on a midi track that is feeding something that will then output the chord progression with the specified rhythmic pattern that I build-regardless of the rhythmic complexity. I’ll be able to do it in ableton by automating things like the gate and duration, but that’s a pretty cumbersome way of trying to create patterns and I prefer to stay within Cubase. I was thinking that I’d build a MAX Msp device for this, but sadly we don’t have rewire anymore so there’s no way to connect Max with Cubase.
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What instrument do you use to play the chords?
Halion and Retrologue have arpeggiator that can be set to chord mode. They are limited to 32 steps though. Would that be enough for the pattern you need?
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Thanks. I didn’t realize Retrologue lets you record the arpeggiator as midi. That takes care of the basic concept. For this specific project, I think I’m out of luck because I need much longer patterns, and in the end it probably will be faster to do it manually. If I can figure out how to chain patterns in Cthulu then that may get me all the way there. Thanks again.
The Chord Pads can be used to play chords with user defined Rhythm Patterns, but the chords have to be defined inside each pad, they cannot came from a MIDI track
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Fantastic Video. Thank you
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Dom’s always got useful stuff, he’s worth watching!