Akai Force Forum: Everything relating to the Akai Force, the new 64 pad, clip-based standalone sampler/groovebox from Akai. While not an MPC, it shares many similar software features to the MPC X/MPC Live including the same underlying code-base.
By SQUARTZ Sun Feb 24, 2019 5:05 am
I've just been playing with the Force for a week or so and I have a question on how the arpeggiator operates.

Does the ARP not have an affect on preexisting notes in a clip?

I'd like to record a clip with notes and then play the clip while manipulating the arpeggiator settings so that different patterns are created.

I can't figure out how to do this. It seems changing arpeggiator settings only has an affect on notes being played in realtime.

Am I missing something?
By J-Fly Sun Feb 24, 2019 12:47 pm
I’m not sure I understand what your question is. Are you saying that when you arm a clip to record and use the arpeggiator to add effects that nothing happens? That can’t be possible because this is how I use note repeat and it’s recording for me.
By SQUARTZ Sun Feb 24, 2019 7:03 pm
No, that works. I’m saying after you record a clip with the arp on and arpeggios are recorded, the arp seems to have no affect on the notes already recorded. At least that is what I’m trying to find out is true or not.

For example with LIVE and PUSH I can record MIDI data with an ARP plug in, which would record the arpeggios. But playing that MIDI clip with the ARP plugin still active, I get addition arpeggios on top of those already recorded.

Does that make sense?
By J-Fly Mon Feb 25, 2019 1:04 am
I remember this being discussed on the Gearslutz forum. What you’re trying to do is possible but through an additional feature on the menu. I’ll have to search through that forum to find it.
By eclipxe Mon Feb 25, 2019 6:15 am
I don’t believe this is possible, not until you can route midi between tracks (you can’t). The arp only impacts the midi stream coming in and the clip playback doesn’t route back through the arp. The arp is a performance mode not a midi plugin. Unfortunately.
By J-Fly Tue Feb 26, 2019 7:31 pm
Sorry, I didn't find anything on the other forum. I must have mistakenly thought they were discussing this topic :hmmm:
By SQUARTZ Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:14 am
eclipxe wrote:I don’t believe this is possible, not until you can route midi between tracks (you can’t). The arp only impacts the midi stream coming in and the clip playback doesn’t route back through the arp. The arp is a performance mode not a midi plugin. Unfortunately.


Thanks for the replies.

This pretty much answers it for me. I guess I'd really like Force to be able to route MIDI between tracks. As it was only just released this month, I'm pretty optimistic that this will be in a future update.
By eclipxe Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:30 pm
Unreallystic wrote:I haven't logged a ton of time on my Force lately, so I'm asking more than telling - but couldn't you map the output of the arpeggiotor channel to an audio channel and record that? Sure it would lose the flexibility of a MIDI channel, but its an option...
- Unreall


OP wants to have the arp triggered by existing notes in a clip. That’s not possible because of the way routing works. The arp comes before the clip node.
By HouseWithoutMouse Sun May 28, 2023 12:28 pm
The idea of the video in short: route the Force's MIDI OUT back to the Force's MIDI IN, and set the arpeggiator control notes to go out the MIDI OUT and the arpeggiator to input from MIDI IN. And make a MIDI track play another MIDI track through the arpeggiator.

If you don't want to dedicate the Force's MIDI ports for this dumb hack, you could use an external multi-i/o USB MIDI interface, and connect a loopback cable between two of its ports. Or for DIY folks, a similar thing can be done with a programmable microcontroller with proper USB, like Arduino models with ATmega32U4, if I recall correctly. Make the Arduino work as a MIDI device which echoes all events it gets, say, from its input channel 1 to its output channel 2.