OK, this knob thingy is useful. This patch is designed for using Europa factory plucks (or your own pluck). ARCUS controls Europa, so don't swap out the synth, but go ahead and try different pluck/percussive sounds. It was designed for stock plucks -- with intention. You scroll through your pluck sounds and find one you like, should be fairly snappy to work the best. I put compression on the sound out from Europa to keep any patch-to-patch volume variation in check. There is also an EQ that you can dial in from the Combinator knobs to tune the sound. I have some basic small amount of reverb on the Europa outputs so it is not totally dry (RV7000).
This Combinator has the Dual Arp Player, it is fed from the Matrix, that triggers a chord in Scales & Chords, then Arp, so you get an arp melody that way. The Matrix sets the long initial notes, and this Combinator is designed to change note every bar, but you can try different stuff in Matrix.
It has a second Scales & Chord to do corrections in case you do something funky in Dual Arp, it will still sound good. You can change the notes in Dual Arp, but keep in mind the patch is designed to have a note hit every second 1/2 bar.
The Arp 2 has a Transpose set (I have it set to 8), so the melody gets more interesting. You can try different transpose since S&C no 2 fixes and odd off notes. But it is there to play a note outside of the chord, but still in scale. For the player stack I used the free CV tap, not stock, but everyone should have it. The only way to get Matrix to trigger S&C.
So, what does ARCUS do. First it AUTOMATICALLY turns off any delay/reverb in Europa, yes, it does this
automatically. I have a LFO 2 feeding some CV values via ARCUS to turn off Europas dly/rev. A static CV doesn't do that, hence the LFO in this CV chain, as values are spit out all the time. Very handy when you scroll through patches so you don't have to mess with these setting every time you audition a new sound (this patch adds reverb, so we don't need it from Europa).
Then ARCUS is fed another LFO that turns up a reverb SEND in the mixer, this LFO 1 is tempo synced to set with a calibrated offset to avoid any reverb from the first note in a sequence, but then the LFO CV goes via an extreme curve in ARCUS so the reverb send turn on a lot on the last note only. What this does, is that the reverb tail can now decay freely from the last notes sound only. It is a nice effect that would require a bunch of automation for each note. And the std Combinator cannot do it since the CV output from the Combinator is linear. ARCUS fixes that. You can adjust the ARCUS curve 1 if you want a little less or more of the notes to be passed into the long reverb.
The third ARCUS application in this patch is used to control the reverb/echo return volume. I have a Combinator knob to add an extra echo (like a second reverb reflection), but the reverb volume drops when you dial up the Echo Wet/Dry, I use a Maximizer as a volume control and it is fed a non-linear curve from ARCUS so the perceived reverb/echo volume stays the same as you increase the echo amount.
So we can call this an automated arpeggio player and to reiterate.
- Root notes from Matrix. BUT, if you turn off CV tap, you can just feed notes from the sequencer.
Arp notes from Dual Arp
Scale is controlled by the two S&C.
Sound, any Europa "plucky" patch.
Hope you like it!
Hard to test this. Want to be clear on exactly what you're saying, here.
Share and download patches!
Join ReasonTalk on Slack!