BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. My name is Bill Holland, and we're looking at the ARP2600v from Arturia. This is the model of the ARP2600 classic synthesizer from the 70s. You can see here we have the main synthesizer along with effects and a few additions for those of you who want to use MIDI, which of course is being a VST that's completely an option. We have a built-in sequencer and then a keyboard.

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It completely functions like the original synthesizer, so it allows you a lot of options like patching anywhere you could possibly want to patch. The nice thing is though they've been very kind to actually highlight the CV controls You can actually patch into, so I don't have to worry about whether or not plugging into something I can't plug into.

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You'll notice you have your oscillators here followed by filters and master attack-decay-sustain-release tool, VCA control, your main mixer control, and reverb. Hidden under this panel, you have chorus and delay, more MIDI sync controls, and frequency tracking. We also have our voltage processor, noise generator, and sample and hold.

Now let's move on to the sequencer real quick. The sequencer is pretty simple to program. These are my 16 steps right here, and the way it's controlled is by semitones so you don't have an actual note. It's more or less gauged on the actual semitone, so if I keep it at zero, it'll play the actual note I play, so if I play middle C, that second note will be middle C because my semitone is set to zero. So let's set the first few notes here to zero just so we can get a feel for how that works.

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Now, what's happening right now is you have two sets of eight running at the same time, so you have two different sequences running over each other. I'm going to set over to 16/1 so I have all 16 steps running in one sequence

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It's also set to random so I'm going to switch back over to sequential so you can hear those first four steps are middle c. Now, if I want to have an octave jump, I can go over here and program this to go up one and down one, and it will jump an octave in either direction [BILL PLAYS SEQUENCE], and I can continue to do that throughout the sequence, so let's play that real quick.

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Now, let's say I want to change up the gate. Right now, gate number 1 is going up to my attack-decay-sustain-release. Let's say we want to switch it over to gate 2. Just grab your patch cable, switch it over to there. Now, let's switch these up to gate 2, and play it back.

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Notice how there's also no break in that because this isn't set to another gate. But if I switch this up, you'll hear it plays back differently.

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So, gate bus 2 is connected to the ADSR in this situation, and I can hit start/stop here [BILL PLAYS SEQUENCE] so you'll notice that it actually triggered the zone notes here [BILL CONTINUES TO PLAY SEQUENCE].

You can also do step editing by using the step editor. If you look here, go back and forth between the steps, we have our LFO control located right next to the sequencer. Also, keyboard control, we can set it to mono or poly. We have our legato control, global tuning, voice detune, and down here you have transpose as well.

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There are some patches in here from famous composers, for example Klaus Schulze. They have his basses, leads, pads, and sequences, so you can go in and select a lead and it'll be programmed after the ARP leads that he would have used back in the 70s, [BILL PLAYS A PHRASE] and then you can go in and fine tune those, adjust them and do whatever you want to give them your own unique sound. [BILL PLAYS A PHRASE]

Well, that is the ARP2600v from Arturia. For now, this is Gearwire.Com and my name is Bill Holland.