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APD Deal - Phrasebox by Venomode!

Larry Shelby

By Larry Shelby
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Fleer

Fleer

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

I had something like that... instacomposer which left a bad taste in my mouth for those kinds of arps.

So, unsure about it.  I'll look at some videos on YouTube.

Don’t use it in Reason, though. Won’t work. Bitwig’s fine. 

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Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler

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This a good one.  Fairly priced I think.  Instacomposer tries to do everything (Chord sequences, melody, etc.).  This is more of an arp or pattern generator based on the chords you feed it.  I really like tools like this that have pattern memory slots so you can dink around with the settings/randomization to easily compare several phrases.  Nice UI.

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PavlovsCat

PavlovsCat

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Honestly, from the video, the piano arpeggiated part, although it's incredibly simple -- it sounds like something a kid would play for their first piano lesson -- it sounds incredibly over-quantized, extremely mechanical. Hard pass. Surely the developer could have done a better job than that. 

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PavlovsCat

PavlovsCat

Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Fleer said:

Hey. I’m like a kid on my first piano lesson. 

Haha! I'm even worse than that. I've had years of piano lessons ages ago that I can't even remember and have a physical issue that ensures that I'll never play well again-- and I don''t. It still doesn't change the fact that this arpeggiator sounds incredibly stiff and over-quantized when used for piano parts. 

When I was listening to the video, I recalled my (piano teacher) mother telling her students when we played something really stiff, "Try that once more, with feeling (or emotion)." Feel is everything and on piano, when you use 100% quantization on a piano part, there's no feel at all in that and even non musicians can hear that doesn't sound like a real pianist played it. It sounds mechanical. You can get away with that for synth sounds, but not piano sounds. 

Know that when I post a critical opinion like that, I don't do it easily. It's easy to make positive, happy posts praising everything -- and I'm a people pleaser, so I enjoy that too. But I think we add more value to the community when he have balance and don't hold back the critical opinions, so I'm trying to push myself to not withhold the more critical posts, even though they're often not well received. Because I think that's often what's  missing in most forums. Or when you do see negative posts, they come from people who tend to be very negative -- and that's definitely not me. The problem is, if we only shower praise on everything, well-balanced (non-negative) people are hesitant to post criticisms and people researching don't get balanced insights. @jngnz can be pretty brutal with his critiques, but he has the guts to share his honest opinions and I deeply respect that and his habit of sharing his opinions candidly have inspired me to be less hesitant to share opinions that aren't just praise. Lord knows,  influencers aren't going to be honest, so we should be. 

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audioschmaudio

audioschmaudio

Posted
Posted

It has a swing slider though. I assume that will "un-quantize". And you can automate the velocity. And if everything fails, you can probably export the generated MIDI and use the tools that your DAW offers, like either adjusting the notes manually or in Ableton Live you could apply a Groove, for example. I don't know what this is called in other DAWs but I believe most have something equivalent.

I'm quite happy with EON Arp though, which seems quite similar and was available for free once.

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audioschmaudio

audioschmaudio

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22 minutes ago, Fleer said:

I guess that once you’ve got Scaler you never look back :)

You can't create your own patterns in Scaler though, can you? I believe it only lets you select from a myriad of pre-existing patterns/phrases/performances, but you can't modify them or create your own from scratch. That's where tools like phrasebox and EON arp come in handy.

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Fleer

Fleer

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18 minutes ago, audioschmaudio said:

You can't create your own patterns in Scaler though, can you? I believe it only lets you select from a myriad of pre-existing patterns/phrases/performances, but you can't modify them or create your own from scratch. That's where tools like phrasebox and EON arp come in handy.

Very true. Looking at Eon arp as well. 

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  • 6 months later...
Marlon1959

Marlon1959

Posted
Posted

unfortunately venomode is no longer available, Phrasebox is a very good tool for ideas, but I haven't found anything for exporting the phrases to midi or in the piano track. You can copy it and place it in the playlist (FL Studio), but that won't be of much use if you want to edit the phrase. Anyone have an idea ?

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Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Marlon1959 said:

unfortunately venomode is no longer available, Phrasebox is a very good tool for ideas, but I haven't found anything for exporting the phrases to midi or in the piano track. You can copy it and place it in the playlist (FL Studio), but that won't be of much use if you want to edit the phrase. Anyone have an idea ?

Venomode/Phrasebox are still available, perhaps not at APD (PB has it, or direct).  Alas, FLStudio MIDI routing is the worst.  I think version 20 implemented a capture mode for MIDI VST output though.  Otherwise you need to do it the way FL users have put up with since "the beginning"; install a MID looper (LoopBe, LoopMIDI, etc) and use it as a "repeater" so FL can read the data as a unique MIDI device.  I think you can do it with Patcher too, but every time I decide to give FL another "go", I end up getting frustrated with the crap MIDI device support and set it aside.  Frustrating, because it has a lot of other features going for it.

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Milan

Milan

Posted
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13 hours ago, Marlon1959 said:

unfortunately venomode is no longer available, Phrasebox is a very good tool for ideas, but I haven't found anything for exporting the phrases to midi or in the piano track. You can copy it and place it in the playlist (FL Studio), but that won't be of much use if you want to edit the phrase. Anyone have an idea ?

Does LibreArp work for you?

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Doug Rintoul

Doug Rintoul

Posted
Posted
13 hours ago, Marlon1959 said:

unfortunately venomode is no longer available, Phrasebox is a very good tool for ideas, but I haven't found anything for exporting the phrases to midi or in the piano track. You can copy it and place it in the playlist (FL Studio), but that won't be of much use if you want to edit the phrase. Anyone have an idea ?

Not sure where you are getting this. Venomode Phrasebox is still available at APD. That being said, Venomode seems to have gone silent. Nothing on their Facebook page since 2022 and the last update for Phrasebox was 2021. But the Venomode website is still up.

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