Project Logo Rarp Project Logo

Why?

Under Linux, there are a bunch of tools, but a standalone arpegiator for ALSA does not appear to currently be a good area. Ones that do exist do not seem to have enough flexibility or usability. The number one requirement is to create a useable arpegiator for live operation.

The pitch

When experimenting with music, patterns will need to develop. Apegiators, similar to those availiable in hardware can be used to develop this quickly and in environments, where rapid prototyping is needed. Rarp intends to allow for one to build patterns quickly with as little interaction with the compter as possible.

What Rarp is not

A Synthesizer

Rarp only intends to work on midi events. In order to use it, another program will need to be used to generate the sound.

A Sequencer

Rarp is intended to be used in a live context, but it may also be used for sequenced songs, but it will not save the sequenced information in any way. It will not be able to save midi, load it or do anything much that a normal sequencer would do.

Related projects/sources of ideas:

qmidiarp, roland arp, secrets of the arpeggiator, ...

How is it built

C wrapps around alsa, to pass events to ruby when changes are received. Ruby can then update the overall loop or not. All highlevel processing is done in ruby for ease of prototyping.

Primary concerns

Documentation, tests, modularity, extendability. The motive of this project is to provide a good live arpeggiator, but that has many different meanings. I do not expect one solution to work, so Rarp will be built to easily change to new ideas.

Current Status

Currently a prototype version 0.1 can be fetched by running: git clone git://fundamental-code.com/rarp.git