Ableton Forum

I've been playing with polymeter recently by having the same instrument play the same chord arpeggiated in sixteenth notes in two voices, but one playing three note chords and one playing five note chords. For example:

Track 1: C4 E4 G4 C4 E4 G4 C4 E4 G4 C4 E4 G4 ...
Track 2: C4 E4 G4 C5 E5 C4 E4 G4 C5 E5 C4 E4 ...

I can manually write out the MIDI for this, but it's annoying because it can't be easily looped (the pattern doesn't repeat for a long time).

Ideally, I'd do this by writing legato chords with 3 and 5 notes (changing chords every bar) and using an arpeggiator (up) to break up the chords. This almost does what I want, but each time the chord changes, the sequence retriggers starting with the first note of the new chord (rather than continuing the pattern with whatever the "next" note would be). That destroys the constantly-modulating polymeter effect.

Is there a way with Ableton's arp (or a different VST) to easily accomplish this? One more simplified example to try to illustrate it (for the two chords C/E/G and D/F/A switching back and forth):

What Ableton's default arp will do:

C E G C | D F A D | C E G C | D F A D

What I want:

C E G C | F A D F | G C E G | D F A D

Maybe run the arps in parallel on 2 chains of a MIDI effect rack and toggle the output every bar.

Ah cool, that conceptually makes sense (have one arp doing CEG and the other doing DFA in parallel and just switch back and forth). But wouldn't two chains wind up processing the exact same MIDI input, so they'd actually need to be on different tracks (automating muting and unmuting, or something like that)? Or is there an easier way?

Yes, depending how the arp notes are generated you may better use tracks instead of chains.
But both methods require basically the same mute/unmute automation.