With the amount of peoeple on here who play most of the elements that go into their msuic. How do you guys feel about using and arp, is it less authentic then playing it yourself.
ps: give me one of your arp "tricks" you use....

Of course not. Is using a sim amp cheating? Any vocal processing?

Depends who you ask. 

A bluegrass musician?  Heck yeah it's cheating.

Most other folk...... nahhhhh ...let it roll.... it's all good. 

No, of course it isn't

And even if it was, who gives a .......?

It's only cheating if you are pretending to be manually playing every single note. Otherwise, it is just another tool in your arsenal. it certainly will not create talent where it does not exist.

The first person I ever heard use an arp (well, an analog step sequencer) was Keith Emerson. I've always felt that if it was acceptable to him, then it's acceptable to me, too.

I have in fact used arps myself from time to time. Just for those little splashes of color you sprinkle in as occasional ear candy.

What I really despise, though, are songs built entirely from loops and arps. Nothing wrong with it objectively. Whatever turns yer crank. Just don't call yourself a musician. It's an insult to everybody who's put in the countless hours necessary to become proficient on a musical instrument.

Not no, but heck no!  Why on earth would it be cheating.  It's just another tool in our musical toolbox.

I always argue for more actual musicianship, though something like an ARP is so much more 'organic' than most of what goes on today that it's almost a different world. I would say that you are probably over-estimating how much of what you hear around is all that actually organic. These days people don't seem to be able to resist using all of the very powerful tools available to make themselves sound far better than they actually are, and the vast over-use of those tools has created a situation in which people feel that they will be seen as amateurish if they don't use them.

I guess it depends. Like Bit said, it's one thing to use them to ****e things up, but, if arps and loops become the centerpiece of your music, then, yes I'd consider it cheating.

I remember a few years ago demonstrating just that to a friend of mine who was into industrial/ebm music. I loaded an instance of Z3T4 and used the initial arp patch -  the whole chord progression was in there - all I had to do was to push one key w/ one finger. I then quickly added a kick pattern. "That's how you write one of those songs".

Even funnier is the fact that a few months later, one of his favorite bands came out w/ a album and released that same thing as a song - just not in the same key. 

To answer the OP, NO. 

Arpeggiate 'manually' are chords where notes are not played at the same time but rather spread out in sequence usually in a rythmic pattern either to create a percussion sequence or melodically. So in that sense arpeggios performance - playing technique has been around for a very, very long time. 

Whereas Arpeggiators have been around since the 1960's. 

1970's Jean Michael Jarre 'Oxygene' is a perfect example: a more extensive used of Arpeggiators. 

1980's Vangelis Chariots of Fire. 

Nowdays it seems Arpeggiators are still being used and I guess will most likley continue that trend into the next century. 

In the 1980's I had synths that included an Arpeggiator but seriously, I absolutely hate these auto freaks of techno babble because I much prefer to input the notes 'manually' myself precisely how I wanted each note to be played rather than have some auto-sequence of notes dish out something of it own accord.