ARPJAM Studio
AUv3 generative synth, sampler
99,00 kr
PHRASE comes to the arpeggiators, the generator BASS got first: reshape the notes, then take hits out to form a phrase. ARP plays chords too. AUv3 and Mac. Pay once.
No sequence. No play button needed.
An instrument that keeps going without you programming anything.
Two generative engines invent phrases endlessly inside the scale and chord you
choose. What you shape is not a song — it is a way of sounding.
Move a control and the sound changes shape without ever stopping. Density,
contour, filter, tape movement. It is built so that nothing you touch can
break it.
And you can play it.
On the key pad or from a MIDI keyboard, right on top of the stream it is
generating. What you play can be captured into the looper.
Now your own sound can go in too.
Record a bar into SAMPLE, the fifth machine, and chopping it up and
rearranging it is the app's job.
■ Generate
• Two independent arpeggio engines (waveform, filter, envelope, effects)
• Eight arpeggio types, chord progressions, ten time signatures
• BASS — a bass machine of its own (STEP / COMPLEXITY / OMIT / PATTERN)
• Drum machine
• Six LFOs, XY pad, performance FX
■ Slice (SAMPLE)
• Record one bar from a mic or line input, with count-in and click
• Record the app itself (ARP A / ARP B / drums), and overdub onto it
• Load audio files — and the audio from a video file
• Up to 32 slices, ordered by the same rules as the arps: direction, reverse,
octave, probability, groove
• STRETCH (on by default) — change tempo without changing pitch
• Its own filter, envelope and delay / reverb sends
■ Play
• On-screen key pad — always in scale
• MIDI keyboard input (damper pedal, pitch bend, standard control changes)
• One-bar looper that records how hard you played
■ Sound
• Piano — three velocity layers, stereo, damper release
• Electric piano — harmonics shift with how hard you strike
• Kalimba, handpan and chime — struck metal, measured from the real instruments and synthesised
• Waveforms (sine / triangle / saw / square) plus an acid filter
• Delay, reverb, Glitch, Granular, overdrive
• DRIFT / FLUTTER — tape movement on the synth voices and the live input alike
• Concert pitch A=415–444 Hz
■ Connect
• AUv3 plug-in — as an instrument and as an effect
• Ableton Link, MIDI Clock, MIDI out
• External audio input (line / microphone)
• WAV recording and export
One-time purchase. No subscription.
more Added.
HEAD ACCENT for PHRASE. Turn it on and, on the first beat of the bar, the top note sounds again an octave higher. What gets stacked follows the shape you picked in CHORD MIX (Single, 3rd, 5th, Triad).
Fixed.
PHRASE on the arpeggiators now follows the chord progression. Until now the root stayed put, so the phrase began on the same note even when the chord changed. Anything that runs off the top of the displayed range folds back to the nearer octave.
Fixed a case where the same chord degree sounded twice while a progression was running.
The fourth setting in CHORD MIX is now called Triad, not 3rd+5th. While a progression runs it stacks the notes of the chord you are on.
2.9.3 1 day ago
The arpeggio type help was missing its line for PHRASE. It is there now.
Nothing else has changed from 2.9.0.
2.9.1 3 days ago
PHRASE comes to the arpeggiators.
PHRASE now sits at the top of ARPEGGIO TYPE. It is the BASS phrase generator brought over intact: without programming a thing, a bass-like line builds itself bar after bar. Being an arpeggiator it plays chords too, and CHORD MIX sets the mix of single notes, 3rds, 5ths and full triads.
A sequence view shows which notes are set and which one is sounding. Tap a cell to drop that step or bring it back. Only the cell you tapped changes, and the OMIT count and PATTERN number move to match.
PHRASE also gains SHAPE, under COMPLEXITY. COMPLEXITY sets how busy the line is; SHAPE picks a different arrangement at that same density - the number of notes stays put, only where they fall changes. BASS gets the same control.
OMIT PATTERN has been rebuilt so that every way of dropping steps can be reached, and no two numbers give the same result.
Tap a key in the generative view to silence that note (ARP A / ARP B / BASS). The probability it would have taken is shared out among the notes that remain.
Also fixed: BASS DRIVE now bites the way it should, and BASS starts on the beat you switch it on.
2.9.0 5 days ago
BASS, the fifth machine, is here — a bass line of its own.
Bass used to be an extra on the arps. This one writes its own phrase. STEP sets how finely it moves, COMPLEXITY how far the line rises and falls, OMIT how many notes to drop and PATTERN which ones go. Raise OMIT and the notes thin out one at a time, so the rhythm changes while the phrase stays.
NORMAL and FM waveforms, CLASSIC and ACID filters, its own envelope, drive and delay / reverb sends. Play it from the key pad or over MIDI, record it into the looper, or sample it. The LFOs and PULSE reach it too.
The looper now has UNDO and REDO — twenty steps. Takes that remain keep sounding while you step back, and it is separate from the UNDO on the main screen, so you can undo the looper alone.
Looper timing is fixed: after a stop and start the first beat no longer arrives late or goes missing.
Levels have been rebalanced too, so stacked BASS and electric piano notes are less likely to distort.
2.8.1 17 Sept
BASS, the fifth machine, is here — a bass line of its own.
Bass used to be an extra on the arps. This one writes its own phrase. STEP sets how finely it moves, COMPLEXITY how far the line rises and falls, OMIT how many notes to drop and PATTERN which ones go. Raise OMIT and the notes thin out one at a time, so the rhythm changes while the phrase stays.
NORMAL and FM waveforms, CLASSIC and ACID filters, its own envelope, drive and delay / reverb sends. Play it from the key pad or over MIDI, record it into the looper, or sample it. The LFOs and PULSE reach it too.
The looper now has UNDO and REDO — twenty steps. Takes that remain keep sounding while you step back, and it is separate from the UNDO on the main screen, so you can undo the looper alone.
Looper timing is fixed: after a stop and start the first beat no longer arrives late or goes missing.
Levels have been rebalanced too, so stacked BASS and electric piano notes are less likely to distort.
2.8.0 16 Sept
Drum reverb and delay can now be shared out instrument by instrument.
REVERB SEND and DELAY SEND used to reach the whole kit at once, so there was no way to wash the snare and leave the kick dry. Each instrument now has a Reverb Trim and a Delay Trim that set how much of the overall send it takes.
Tap the KICK / SNARE / HIHAT / NOISE bar in the generative view to turn that instrument on or off. Lanes that are playing stay in colour, lanes that are off go monochrome.
DRUMS gains a Global Density that moves all four instruments together while each keeps its own Density setting.
2.7.0 4 Sept
The key pad looper now records the PEDAL as well.
Until now it captured only the keys, so pressing the PEDAL bar between the two pads left no trace. From this version the press and the release are repeated exactly where you made them. A sustain pedal on a connected MIDI device behaves the same way.
Hold it for a whole bar and the loop holds it throughout — starting the press just before the bar line no longer drops the pedal part-way round.
Three fixes come with it:
- The pedal could stay down after you stopped playback, and remain down from then on
- A pedal you were holding by hand could be cut short by the loop playing back its own
- A pedal recorded across a whole bar stopped working from the third pass
2.6.2 2 Sept
SAMPLE now has HEAD FADE.
If the recording was already sounding when you started it, the material begins part-way through a waveform — and that edge can be heard as a click every time the first slice plays. HEAD FADE fades in the very start of the material to take it out.
The Fade just below applies to every slice. HEAD FADE applies only to the head, so nothing else about the material changes. It follows the crop, and it works in reverse too.
The default is 0. Leave it there and everything sounds exactly as before.
2.6.1 31 Aug
Two new sounds. Neither is a sample — both are synthesised, so the filter, the envelope and the effects work on them exactly as they do on every other waveform.
■ KALIMBA
The thumb piano. Built from measurements of real recordings, down to the high partial that rides on the pluck itself and is gone in 40 milliseconds.
■ HANDPAN
Struck metal. Around the note you hit, the neighbouring notes of the shell ring along and give the sound its body. The slow swell that arrives a moment after the strike is in there too.
■ Every waveform now keeps its own settings
Until now sin / tri / saw / sq shared a single set, so switching waveform carried the envelope over with it. All nine waveforms now keep their own. Patches made with earlier versions are shared out as they load, so they still sound the way they did.
■ Fix
On the Mac, the round and plus handles inside the envelope graph were squashed into ovals.
2.6.0 30 Aug
Fixes.
■ Notes you never played no longer sound when MIDI Out is on
With MIDI Out enabled, ARPJAM's own MIDI input was picking up the notes ARPJAM had just sent, so the drum notes kept sounding as pitches. Turning ARP A or ARP B off did not stop it, and the app grew sluggish. ARPJAM no longer listens to its own output.
■ Moving CUTOFF no longer cuts the ACID filter envelope short
With FILTER TYPE set to ACID or ACID SUB, moving CUTOFF while playing ended each sounding note's filter sweep, so the tone went flat — as though FILTER DECAY had been turned right down — for as long as you kept moving. An LFO on CUTOFF did the same thing. CUTOFF is the floor the filter envelope sits on, so the envelope now rides along with it. The control responds just as quickly as before.
2.5.3 28 Aug
Fixes.
■ CHARACTER now reaches the ACID filter
With FILTER TYPE set to ACID or ACID SUB, switching CHARACTER to ANALOG left the sequenced notes sounding PURE — while notes you played by hand did use ANALOG, so one patch could sound two different ways. Patches that combine ACID with ANALOG will sound different from this version on: brighter, and a little louder.
■ Keys sound immediately after you stop
Right after stopping playback, a MIDI keyboard or the KEY PAD could take a moment before anything was heard.
■ Held notes are no longer cut off by stopping
Holding a key while the sequence played, then stopping, used to silence the held note as well. It now rings until you lift your finger.
■ No more Japanese text when the app runs in English
Descriptions and status labels on the SYSTEM page, confirmation dialogs and SAMPLE import messages were bypassing the language switch and stayed in Japanese. Thank you to everyone who reported it.
2.5.2 26 Aug
A fix.
As an AUv3 plug-in, after the host window was resized, sliding between panels could come to rest part-way instead of on a panel — most noticeably around SAMPLE, and it would return there even after you corrected it.
2.5.1 25 Aug
A new voice: CHIME.
■ CHIME
A metal chime bar, built by analysing recordings of the real instrument. Its partials are not whole-number multiples, so it stays clear instead of dissolving into a chord. Lower notes ring longer, and the harder it sounds the brighter it gets. Use the Decay / Release in ENVELOPE to shorten it. You will find it next to ep under WAVEFORM.
Envelope and filter settings are now remembered for four groups — the four synth shapes, PIANO, EP and CHIME. Patches you have already made load exactly as before.
■ A PEDAL bar on the KEY PAD
A full-width bar between the two pads. It works as a sustain pedal while you hold it, so notes keep ringing after you lift your finger. It applies to both ARP A and ARP B, and you can hand it over between fingers.
A sustain pedal on a connected MIDI device now applies to both ARP A and ARP B as well.
■ KEY PAD refinements
• Pressing a key that is already held no longer re-triggers it. As on a real keyboard, the note stops when the last finger lifts
• The column of each note the sequencer plays now lights up
2.5.0 24 Aug
Finer control, throughout — on the drums, on the arps, and now on the way out of the app.
■ TUNE on the drums
±12 semitones on KICK, SNARE, HIHAT and NOISE. The filter moves with the oscillator, so tuning down darkens the sound by the same amount. The length never changes, so no amount of tuning drifts the rhythm. LFOs can drive it too.
■ Two more voices each
KICK gains Round (no click, rounded) and Sub (near-pure sine). SNARE gains Dry (short and paper-dry) and Rim (a rimshot). HIHAT gains Soft (warm and light) and Tick (thin and hard).
■ DECAY on the snare
Set how long the snare rings. Choosing a Type loads that voice's natural length, and the slider stretches or shortens it from there. The attack is never squeezed, so the character of the sound stays intact.
■ Fade on SAMPLE
Softens the head and tail of every slice (0–50 ms). Raise it a little when random playback makes the cuts audible. The default is 0 and adds nothing, so the patches you already made sound exactly as before.
■ OCTAVE and a tremolo on the arps
A slider under the 5th that layers the note one octave above — brighter and more forward, without a chordal feel. Unlike the 5th it can never fall outside the scale, so it always sounds.
ARP A and ARP B each gain a tremolo too: it pulses the level while panning left and right. This kind of effect normally vanishes the moment anything sums to mono; this one keeps its pulse through a PA or a phone speaker.
■ Volume and EQ on the master
The output now has a Volume and a three-band EQ (Low / Mid / High). With all three at 0 the EQ is not in the path at all, so everything you have already made sounds exactly as before.
■ The master compressor can be switched off
A busy passage sounding quieter than a sparse one was the output compressor holding it down — it starts working at around four voices, and by eight each part is under half its solo level. Switch it off for live work when you want the dynamics as played, and set where it starts working from −12 to 0 dB (−3.0 dB is what it always was). The switch is handed over smoothly, so it never clicks and the timing does not move. With it off there is no ceiling, so bring Volume down first.
■ Plug-in (AUv3)
The SAMPLE parameters are now exposed to your host — Level, Pitch, Slices, Fade, Density and 31 in total. The arps' Octave and the master's Volume / EQ / compressor are there too. Also fixed: CHARACTER (PURE / ANALOG) did not respond to host automation.
■ Fixes
• Fixed SAMPLE recording silence when neither headphones nor an audio interface were connected
• Removed the noise at the loop seam, on the last slice, and when PITCH was raised
• Removed the crackle when moving SAMPLE's send controls
• Levelled the snare voices against each other
• Removed the REC button from the XY pad (XY moves cannot be recorded)
• Text that stayed in Japanese on an English device is now in English
2.4.0 24 Aug
SAMPLE is here — a fourth machine. Your own sound, played back by the same generative rules as the arps.
■ Record
A bar from a mic or line input, with count-in and click. You can also record the app itself — ARP A, ARP B or the drums — and OVERDUB another pass on top of what you already have.
■ Load
Audio files, and the audio from a video file. For long material, RANGE is where you say "this part is one bar". You can drag the range past the end of the material, too — the gap is filled with silence.
■ Slice
Up to 32 slices per bar, reordered by the rules you already know from the arps: direction, reverse, octave, fifth, probability and groove. Each slice can be switched off.
■ Stretch
STRETCH is on by default: whatever you record or load is fitted to exactly one bar, and tempo changes leave the pitch alone. Turn it off and speed and pitch move together, the way tape does.
■ Modulate
Twelve LFO destinations and three PULSE destinations. SAMPLE has its own chord-progression follow, filter, envelope and delay / reverb sends.
■ Undo
One step back — after a CLEAR, or after an overdub that came in at the wrong level.
■ Also
• A velocity slider on the key pad
• SAMPLE added to the key pad, overview, XY pad and the bottom navigation
• Fixed the key pad becoming sluggish while recording
• Removed the click at the loop seam and when you press stop
• Fixed slice lengths changing when you change the time signature
2.3.1 22 Aug
Bug fixes and control improvements.
FIXED
- Moving the ACID filter CUTOFF made the tone drop and then open up again when you let go (PATTERN modes)
- The app could quit unexpectedly when a slider was moved continuously during playback
- When one LFO modulated another LFO's DEPTH, the handle was drawn off the centre of its modulation range
- Trying to drag a slider could switch the panel to a different page
IMPROVED
- CUTOFF, XY PAD and LFO now follow your finger immediately
- The INIT preset's ARP B level is now 75%, matching ARP A
2.2.1 13 Aug
ARPJAM Studio now runs on the Mac (universal purchase — if you own it on iPad/iPhone, the Mac version is included).
■ Mac
- Standalone app
- AUv3 plug-in (instrument and effect) in Logic Pro, Ableton Live, GarageBand and more
- Ableton Link
■ New sounds
- New "EP" waveform — a synthesized electric piano voice
- New oscillator "Character" — PURE (the exact waveform, as before) or ANALOG (analog-synth imperfection: imperfect shapes, slow pitch drift, random start phase, gentle saturation)
- Envelope and filter settings are now remembered separately for three groups — the four synth shapes, PIANO, and EP — so switching waveform recalls that group's own settings
■ New
- TIE switch — consecutive slots tie into one legato line (non-consecutive notes play as before)
- MIDI out on a virtual port ("ARPJAM Studio OUT") — sequence your other instruments from ARPJAM, even in DAWs that cannot read plug-in MIDI output such as Ableton Live (ARP A=ch1 / ARP B=ch2 / DRUMS=ch10)
- New Target setting in the plug-in — choose whether the host's MIDI plays ARP A or ARP B
- Vel Sens in MIDI INPUT — boosts incoming velocity so a light touch can match the sequencer's level
- Vel Sens in the Oscillator section — sets how hard the sequencer strikes (hand playing is unaffected)
■ Improved and fixed
- Big reduction of audible zipper/click noise while adjusting parameters during playback (raising DRIVE from zero, send levels, STEREO WIDTH, switching reverb types)
- Sliders are easier to grab (edge drags, coexistence with vertical scrolling)
- iPhone layout fully reworked
- Overview screen refined (uniform card heights; taller content scrolls inside its card)
- Fixed horizontal swipes failing right after a vertical scroll
- Fresh installs and newly inserted plug-ins now boot with the current factory preset
- Fixed the plug-in importer sometimes rejecting valid .arpjam files
- Fixed the export name dialog escaping small plug-in windows
2.2.0 10 Aug
Thank you for using 2.0. This update fixes a few problems and evens out the levels.
■ The waveforms are now level-matched
Switching between sine, triangle, saw, square and piano no longer changes how loud the instrument is — every shape was measured and matched. The piano in particular used to sit below the rest.
■ Clicks removed
• Moving CUTOFF or KEY FOLLOW while notes are sounding
• A small click at the head of every sine note
■ Piano
In a DOUBLE, the first of the two strikes could be silent. It now behaves the way a real piano does, the second strike taking over from the first.
2.0.1 7 Aug
ARPJAM Studio has been rebuilt from the ground up. A new engine, written in native Swift — it behaves differently and it sounds different.
■ Play it from a MIDI keyboard
Connect a keyboard and play directly. Damper pedal, pitch bend and the standard control changes (cutoff, resonance, ADSR, send amounts) are all supported. What you play lights the key pad and records straight into the looper.
■ AUv3 plug-in
Use it inside AUM, Logic, GarageBand and other hosts, as an instrument or as an effect. Run several at once, or put ARPJAM's texture on another track.
■ A new piano
Three velocity layers, so playing softly changes the tone and not only the volume. Recorded and played back in stereo, with the damper sound as a key is released and decay lengths chosen per register. Re-striking a key now behaves the way a real piano does.
■ Key Follow (new)
A control that takes less away from the bass as you close the filter, so low notes keep their body however dark you go.
■ Texture
DRIFT and FLUTTER tape movement now runs on the synth voices and on the live input alike. Every voice follows the concert-pitch setting (A=415–444 Hz).
■ Glitch / Granular
Their reverb tail now matches HALL, and both have real stereo width.
■ Audio input
Cleaner line and microphone capture, plus a HUM FILTER that removes mains hum.
Everything is native Swift now: lighter, tighter timing, and easier on the CPU.
2.0.0 6 Aug
Fixed sustained playing on the PLAY PAD. Held notes now ring for as long as you hold them instead of cutting off early. Plus stability improvements.
1.10.1 13 Jul
ARPJAM Studio 1.1 — a major update
● RECORD: capture everything you hear as a WAV file and share it via AirDrop or Files
● INPUT: bring a USB-C audio interface or the mic into the app — monitored and recorded together with the engine. Noise gate, low-pass and delay/reverb sends included
● TIME SIGNATURES: 10 meters from 3/4 to 12/8, with drum grids and beat dots following along. 7/4 and 7/8 offer accent-grouping variants, plus an ACCENT VEL switch that emphasises the strong beats
● New mode "Random Motif": composes a one-bar phrase by itself, loops it, and evolves it bar by bar. Save phrases you love into Pattern 1/2 and fine-tune them by hand
● CONTOUR: gives random note picking melodic inertia — raise it and randomness turns into singable lines
● Smoother touch: horizontal scrolling no longer fights sliders and switches, and the parameter help popups have been redesigned for readability
● Many stability improvements and bug fixes
The manual has been fully updated: twelvetone.jp/arpjam-studio/manual/index.en.html
1.10 11 Jul
Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
1.04 8 Jun
• Preset export now works when the app runs on Mac (Apple Silicon).
• Improved the startup tutorial — added the Arpeggio Type step and tidied the order.
• Minor tweaks and stability improvements.
1.03 6 Jun
• Generative notes now appear as each oscillator's waveform icon.
• The Fifth layer now sounds on the Piano voice too.
• Avoid Mode is now available in Pattern mode — choose whether the added fifth stays in-scale or plays on every note.
• Minor tweaks and stability improvements.
1.02 5 Jun
Added.
HEAD ACCENT for PHRASE. Turn it on and, on the first beat of the bar, the top note sounds again an octave higher. What gets stacked follows the shape you picked in CHORD MIX (Single, 3rd, 5th, Triad).
Fixed.
PHRASE on the arpeggiators now follows the chord progression. Until now the root stayed put, so the phrase began on the same note even when the chord changed. Anything that runs off the top of the displayed range folds back to the nearer octave.
Fixed a case where the same chord degree sounded twice while a progression was running.
The fourth setting in CHORD MIX is now called Triad, not 3rd+5th. While a progression runs it stacks the notes of the chord you are on.
more Version 2.9.3 1 day ago
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