As flexible as the MO and Motif ES arpeggiators are, there is one thing that I cannot seem to be able to do. On my old Prophet 600, I could play an arpegiation in real time, and then stomp on a footswitch to lock in the playback so that the pattern would repeat without having to hold the keys down.
At that point, I could manually play another line on top of the held appegiation.

With my MO6, I can turn on “hold” so that the arpeggiation will continue after removing my hands from the keyboard, but is there anyway to have it work like my old Prophet 600 so that the arpeggiator can be held without retriggering when I start playing again?

Yikes, :^) the Prophet 600… (first keyboard with a MIDI jack!) We think you can devise a way to do a slight bit more than the Prophet 600 could (lol). As I recall, and forgive me, that was 27 years ago… had like a pair of oscillators, an up/down arpeggio and a function that allowed you to create what was called an arpeggio but really was just playing back notes you fed in… each additional note you played was added to the end of the list, kind of. Rests? well you really didn’t have the ability to pause… arpeggios back in the early ‘80s were all about a steady stream of notes - no pauses. UP or DOWN, or UP and DOWN, or DOWN and UP or one-right-after-the-other-no-pauses-at-all-ever-and-then-repeat.... lol

The Prophet was 2 oscillators. You could however, have an oscillator arpeggiating and play something else with the other oscillator or something like that.

Well, in the MO, and the Motif ES you have 16 Part multi-timbral capability and although you still have just one arpeggiator you can latch it on one MIDI channel then play over top of it on another. ANd of course, the arps are now musical gestures of all types, drums, bass lines, gutiar strumming, etc., etc. and can do chords (yikes!) with rests !

Go to SONG or PATTERN mode
Press [MIXING]
You can set any PART to use the arpeggiator
Press [EDIT]
Press Track button [1] to view PART parameters
Press [F1] VOICE
Press [SF1] VOICE - select the Voice you want to arpeggiate
Press [SF2] MODE - make sure the PART’s ARP SWITCH = ON

Simply setup PART 1 with the sound you want to arpeggiate
Set your Foot Switch = cc097 ARP HOLD
Press [UTILITY] > [F4] CTRL ASN > [SF3] FT SW
Set FS = 097 ARP HOLD
Plug an FC4 or FC5 into the Assignable Foot Switch jack
Activate the main ARP ON/OFF so the LED is lit.

Setup the sound or sounds you wish to play over the arp with on PARTS 2 through 16 of the MIXING setup

Now [STORE] your SONG or PATTERN MIXING setup
Press [TRACK] so that the button is illuminated. now when you press [1] you will be transmitting to the arpeggio PART
Start your arp, step on the Foot Switch to latch it

Press [2] - [16] to choose the sound you wish to jam on top with… At any time, even while you jamming on MIDI channel 2 or 3, or whatever, anytime, you want to stop the arpeggio, simply step on the FC4/FC5 and it will release the ARP HOLD (stop the arp).

To feed a new chord to the arpeggiator, you will need to hit TRACK button [1], play the chord and latch it with the pedal.

Now you can add effects (oh, sorry, Prophet 600 that was before effect processors on keyboards), use the pitch bend and mod wheel, as I recall, both oscillators would go into pitch bend or modulation if you attempted to work the wheels… (etc., etc., etc).

Get your Prophet 600 and I’ll take the MO or the ES, want to see who can do more? :^) Just kidding… but I think if you try this you will be amazed at what you can do!!! And the arps do way, way more than up/down, down/up and random (although those patterns are all included)

:) Enjoy! And thanks for the trip to memory lane :)

Thanks Bad Mister—that’ll definately work for me!
Seems like many solutions rely on going into the song/pattern mode (e.g. avoiding note cut off, etc). Not exactly obvious nor in the printed documentation, but very useful to know.

As for the Prophet 600, well, all i can say is have a little respect for your elders! If it wasn’t for it you might not be here. ;-)

Thanks again!
-Ron