Kurzweil PC88 A Step By Step Manual page 36

PC88 Made Easy
These three parameters allow you to do some pretty wild things with the arpeggiator.
The best thing to do is just experiment with different settings. When you find something
you like, you can save it as a Setup.
14. Press the >> button. If you turn the last parameter, Glissando, to On, then the
arpeggiator will not only play the notes you strike, it will also play all the notes in
between the notes you strike.
In addition to making regular arpeggios with pitched instruments, you can get interesting
effects with by using the arpeggiator with drum and percussion programs. The PC88
itself has somewhat limited abilities in this area since you canÕt edit the drum programs,
but if you use the PC88 to control an external sound module in which you can edit the
sounds, you can create many interesting patterns.
The key to this is to create programs that have no sample assigned to specific notes.
That way, by including those notes in your arpeggiated pattern, you can get the
equivalent of rests, to create more varied rhythmic patterns. You can actually
demonstrate this on the PC88 itself (if you have the VGM board), using the Latin
Percussion program (#63 in the Expansion Voices bank). This program was designed so
that playing certain patterns of keys would create specific rhythms. You can use the
arpeggiator to repeat that pattern over and over while you hold the notes instead of
having to play them. For example if you set the Play Order to Up and you hold all the
notes in a C maj or scale from C4 to C5, you will hear the Latin Tumbao pattern. These
patterns are documented in the manual on page C-5.
You may want to go through the various parameters we have described to create an
arpeggiator setting you want to work with. Then Name and Save this Setup - we will be
using it as a starting point for the next few tutorials.