Transpose chords for Soloing
Arpeggios have been used extensively throughout the history of music. All the classic composers used arpeggios in their music. In the modern era, arpeggios are ubiquitous across all genres or music. Great pianists, guitarists, wind and string instrumentalists incorporated arpeggios in their performances to demonstrate solo virtuosity.
When an arpeggio pattern is transposed in octave intervals for a few steps, the Arpeggio is transformed totally. The most memorable arpeggios sweep up and down in interesting and rhythmic patterns and sequences.
A legendary guitarist once stated that what really counts is what you contribute to the song to make it a great one, a memorable one. Blazing speed and complex chords all have their place, but only to the extent that they make a better song or recording. What always works is fewer notes and more space. The secret to great creations is to play some notes and rest in innovative, appealing, engaging patterns and sequences.
For your arpeggios, less is often more. Great sweeping arpeggio solos can be generated with just a single arpeggio using octave transpositions, assigning just eighth note values, or eighth note triplets, across three steps with two-cycle repeats.
Be careful if you have selected triplets and dotted notes together with a standard step setting in your arrangement. Make sure that the total of your note steps adds up to a value of one (1) for a full bar. If you have too many step varieties playing simultaneously, you will just generate discordant noise.
Effects in your DAW can change instrument sound significantly. Effects can be hugely beneficial when you play arpeggios across many octave intervals. EQ can be adjusted for lower and higher frequency notes to balance or change the instrument sounds completely.
Remember: For most DAWs, you can customise instrument sounds in real time by adjusting the settings for EQ, Compression, Echo, Delay, Flanger, and Reverb to configure the instrument sound to suit your composition requirements.
Be careful when applying Delay and Echo. Delay and Echo will continue playing into their following bar and can bleed into the notes of the following chord. Too much bleed can be very discordant and grating to the ear. Ramp down Delay and Echo to minimise any discordant bleed.
Gate Setting has a major impact on how sound is produced by instruments such as Hard Rock Guitars and Stringed and Synth instruments in your DAW. Clean sounds are a fundamental part of all arpeggios. When transposing chords over many steps, it is crucial that the ind’t bleed into each other and generate a wall of noise. With high-value gate settings and quick transpositions over multiple steps, notes can become fuzzy and indistinct. To sharpen sounds or generate a Staccato (clipped and quick) sound, set the Gate Setting to values below 50%.
Be aware: A Gate Setting below 10% might be too short to trigger some instrument sound in many DAWs. Play around with different Gate Settings to fine tune the sharpness of note sounds.
ChordWalk gives you endless possibilities for complex riff and lick development: experiment, experiment, experiment.