arpeggiated

There's been a bit of discussion on the Ion-Micron List about the lack of features in the Ion's arpeggio especially in comparison to it's cheaper Micron cousin. Indeed, you would expect that an update to the Ion software should be able to fix this pronto but there's little word from Alesis about it as yet.

However, I've enjoyed every sound I get out of the thing! I suppose this is mostly due to the newness of the machine (and arpeggiators in general) to me. Just setting it off and letting it run... It's all so different to how I made music in the 80s. And, to be honest, I know I'm only scratching the surface - sequencers, midi control via PC software, etc are all unknown entities to me as well.

In any case, here's my 1st attempts at (a) recording solo in this golden age and (b) using the Ion arpeggio functions:

mp3: arpeggiated (nb - almost 10mb)

I think you have to do 2 things to make arpeggios sound good:

(1) Select the notes and the number of notes to be played judiciously.
(2) Ram it into a delay unit and sync the delay to the arpeggio tempo.

With this in place you get a repetitive sequence of chords and single notes that, depending upon the complexity of the interactions, sounds almost endless.

This track has got 3 of these overlayed and when they all join in there's a rather silly banjo plucking thing going on that makes me smile. Overdubbed on this are a deep, deep kick drum, a few bass notes (with my annoying tendency to fluff the notes as I lose concentration left in) and 2 wanky "lead" runs on the Ion and the Arp Odyssey.

You can see it as my homage to Church Of Anthrax by John Cale and Terry Riley, if you like.