All About Arpeggios

Arpeggios—those clever, MIDI-driven performance snippets that produce everything from drum patterns to guitar strums—have been one of the key features of the Motif series since Day One.

The XS offers 6633 different arpeggios, plus there are four independent arpeggiators that let you apply one, say, to a drum voice, one to a bass, one to a guitar, and one to a synth part. There are over 1900 drum arpeggio patterns to choose from, over 1200 guitar arpeggios, over 1200 bass arpeggios… all of which can be recorded then feed into the Real Time Loop Remix engine to develop an unlimited number of variations…

Each of these four arpeggio engines can tap into the pool of 6633 arps, and you have 5 sets of these arpeggios ‘live’ at any one time under the Sub-Function [SF] buttons. In a PERFORMANCE (the mode where you can combine up to four Voices split and/or layered across the keyboard) each can have it own set of arpeggios. So you can have a ‘drummer’ who has a main verse 1 groove as ARP1, an alternate verse 2 groove as ARP2, a wide open busy pattern for ARP 3, while ARP4 and ARP5 could be different fill-ins or transition patterns.

Next your ‘bass player’ could have a similar layout of ARP1 = Verse 1, ARP2 = Verse 2, ARP 3 = the wide open chorus section and so on.
Same with your virtual arpeggiated ‘guitar player’.

In addition to arps that function like those on a Motif ES, the XS has arps that have chordal intelligence, which lets them do many things that were not possible on other Motif models such as Performance Control over mutes, hold settings etc. Many of these arps also possess up to 8 velocity zones. This means that the guitar parts and the bass parts will have much more realism and ‘attitude’ than previous available.

Assigning these multiple arpeggios, plus being able to ‘voice’ them in real time is what creates the unique performance-orientated experience of playing the Motif XS. Using the multiple arpeggios, the chord intelligence, with real time control means you have an extremely power tool in terms of getting germ ideas down quickly. Not mear patterns that play the same everytime, an arpeggio can come to life by how you approach playing it. Change the chord voicing, change the rhythm with which you play chords or single notes, change the velocity with which you hit the notes, tweak the real time knob control to adjust the feel of an arpeggio part ... times up to four simultaneous parts… plus all of this can be recorded, at once or individually, to the sequencer… add this all up and you have one of the most powerful “writer’s block” busters of all time!!

You just have to XSperience this for yourself.