Cubase 14: Pattern Editor Arps

The Pattern Editor makes a great starting point for generating arpeggio‑style patterns.

Need a better arpeggiator? Cubase’s Pattern Editor can deliver the goods!

The new Drum Machine and Pattern Editor features in Pro and Artist versions of Cubase 14 are obviously designed to complement each other. However, the Pattern Editor feature set also provides some interesting possibilities for designing synth arpeggio patterns. So, if you are fond of the occasional arp, pick yourself a pluck sound, pluck up your courage, and let’s see what I’m ’arping on about...

Making Notes

Cubase has long had a number of tools for creating arpeggio patterns, including the Arpache MIDI plug‑ins and the arpeggio engine built into Retrologue. However, the Pattern Editor provides a very neat alternative because it offers some creative options. For this example (for which I’ve created accompanying audio examples on the SOS website: https://sosm.ag/cubase-0525), I’ll use an instance of Retrologue with a short ‘pluck’ style synth preset. The first step, though, is in the Add Track dialogue box: select the Pattern Editor option as the Event Type. When you then select this new track in the Project window (as shown in the first screenshot), the Editor tab in the Lower Zone will show you the Pattern Editor rather than the standard MIDI Editor.

When used with Drum Machine, the Pattern Editor automatically configures lanes for each of the available drum sounds linked to the correct MIDI note. That’s great for obvious reasons, but for a melodic instrument you’ll need to reconfigure this — to make pattern creation easier it makes good sense to set up lanes only for any notes that you know you’ll need. For example, in the screenshot, I’ve just set up lanes for a single octave (C3 to C4), using only notes in the C major scale. You could pick more exotic key/scale/note combinations if you wish, and use a span of notes over multiple octaves too; the choice is yours, depending on how complex you like your arpeggio patterns to get. Also, observe that I’ve assigned the notes in pitch order (lowest pitch at the bottom of the lane list). This isn’t how the Pattern Editor would do things by default, and I don’t think you can simply drag/drop lanes to reorder them — plan ahead, and you won’t have to do this twice!

Built By Hand

To keep things simple for this demonstration, I opted for a conventional 16‑step, 16th‑note grid on which to build my arpeggios, but you can adjust these settings globally (in the Pattern Editor’s topmost menu bar) or on a per‑lane basis (although, there are some quirks to how lanes with different step counts behave if more unusual rhythmic patterns are your thing).

Once dropped onto the timeline, you can easily change the pattern number or convert the patterns into standard MIDI parts.Creating your first pattern manually (by...