tl;dr : Why are the default transposition amounts on the Step Poly Arp grid the way they are? How does this fit with music theory?
I’m still new to music theory and was confused by the Step Poly Arp app for the iPad. At first I saw that it lets you choose the scale you want, so I figured this would make the arpeggiator grid allow you to program all the notes of that scale; so if you made a linear diagonal line upwards, it would play each note in the scale (I think this might be how Cthulhu works but not sure). However this is not how the app works. Instead, the scale limits the notes of the app’s visual keyboard (not pictured) to only allow you to press the notes in the scale you chose. As far as the arpeggiator goes, each row has a different semitone amount the notes are transposed by (either positively or negatively). Are these just simply the transpositions that would never be out of scale (i.e.: 7 semitones is a perfect 5th)? This feels very limited. I feel that an arpeggiator that lets you choose a scale and then give you all the notes in order would be more intuitive. If this current state makes more sense, I don’t understand why. Or do people that use arpeggiators often just manually custom change the transposition for each note because they are already so in tune with music theory?
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83949776/_Hosted%20IMG/2016/stepPolyArp.png
Submitted September 02, 2016 at 07:23PM by elgraysoReddit https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/50vuzy/music_theory_and_arpeggiators_question/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Friday, September 2, 2016