How to Use 23ArpDelay: Patterns, Taps and Activation

23ArpDelay is a delay whose repeats know what key you are in. This guide covers activating it, then what every control does, then a few settings worth starting from.

Key takeaways

• Activation is one paste and one click. The key is on your Gumroad receipt, it covers three machines, and after the first check the plugin works offline.
• The pattern builder sets all the taps at once. Shape, Scale, Motion and Spacing between them decide the whole pattern; the graph shows it before you play a note.
• Tap pitches are intervals from what you played, not from a fixed root. Move the part and the pattern moves with it.
• A tap with no pitch shift skips the shifter, so 23ArpDelay is still a plain delay when you want one.

Activating it

Buying the plugin gives you a licence key that looks like this:

XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX

It is on the Gumroad download page and in the receipt email. Then:

1. Install the plugin and open it on a track in your DAW. Unactivated, it loads and passes audio through unchanged — it does not add noise or go silent, it just does nothing yet.
2. Paste the whole key into the box, dashes included.
3. Press Activate. It says Contacting Gumroad… for a second, then Activated. Thank you. and the interface appears.

That machine is now done. You never have to activate that installation again, and every format on it — VST3, AU, LV2 — is covered by the same activation.

What the messages mean

• “That licence key was not accepted.” The key did not match. Nine times out of ten it is a stray space, a missing character, or a key from a different product. Copy it again from the receipt.
• “Could not reach the licence service.” A network problem rather than a key problem. A VPN, a firewall or an offline machine will all produce it. Try again when you are online.
• “This key is already active on 3 machines.” One key covers three. If you have changed computers, write to hi.23dsp@gmail.com and I will free a seat.

Offline, and afterwards

After the first activation the plugin re-checks about once a fortnight, quietly, while you work. If that check cannot reach the internet, nothing happens — you keep working. A failed check never removes a licence. The only thing that does is a refund, which releases the key deliberately.

So a studio machine with no network is fine: activate it once on any connection, and it stays activated.

The pattern builder

Four dropdowns and two sliders set every tap at once.

Shape

The outline the taps follow: Rising Steps climbs, Valley falls and comes back, Arch does the opposite, Spread Wide pushes the extremes apart, Octave Jumps leaps, Scatter is deliberately uneven. Shape decides the contour; Scale decides which notes that contour is allowed to land on.

Scale

Major, natural minor, the modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian), pentatonic major and minor, blues, whole tone, chromatic. Every tap is quantised to it. Change the scale with a pattern already running and the taps requantise as you watch.

The important part: the scale is measured from what you play, not from a root note you set. A part moved up a fifth keeps the same pattern, in the new key, with nothing re-entered. The Reference Note dropdown only labels the graph — it does not transpose anything by itself.

Motion

The order the taps move through the shape: Up, Down, Up-Down, Down-Up, Random, Converge (outside in), Diverge (inside out), Skip. On a sparse part the difference between Up and Converge is the difference between a line and a swarm.

Spacing and Octaves

Spacing sets the step between taps — scale degrees for something that sounds like a run, thirds for something arpeggiated, fourths and fifths for something that opens out, octaves for the obvious. Octaves spreads the whole thing across one to four.

Taps is how many repeats you get, up to sixteen.

The graph, and editing by hand

The middle of the window is the pattern: one dot per tap, its height the interval, its stem the timing. Click a dot to select that tap. Drag it and it snaps to the nearest note in the current scale, so hand edits stay in key.

The advanced view puts every per-tap control on screen at once.

The panel on the right belongs to whichever tap is selected:

• Level — that tap’s volume.
• Interval — its pitch in semitones, relative to the input.
• Stereo Pan — where it sits.
• Cutoff and Res, with a Filter type of lowpass, highpass, bandpass or off.
• Tap Timing — a subdivision when the plugin is synced, or a free time in milliseconds.
• Mute and Reverse. Reverse plays that tap backwards.

The global controls

• Wet is the blend. On a lead, 25–40% is usually enough; the delay should not be louder than the part it answers.
• Repeats is feedback. Past about 60% the taps start feeding each other and the pattern becomes a texture rather than an echo.
• Tail Shape decides how the repeats fall away: linear, exponential or logarithmic. Exponential is the tidy one, logarithmic hangs on longest.
• Free Time sets the delay when you are not synced to the host.
• Transpose shifts the whole pattern in semitones.
• Stereo places the taps: Center, Alternating, Wide, or by hand per tap.

What the pitch shifting does, and does not do

Each tap gets its own phase vocoder, per channel. Two consequences are worth knowing because they change how you work:

Level does not change with the shift. A tap two octaves up is as loud as a tap at unison. You can widen a pattern without going back to rebalance every tap.

Pitched and unpitched taps land on the same beat. Each tap is compensated for the shifter’s own latency, so mixing plain repeats with pitched ones stays in time.

One limit to know: a pitched tap needs about 46 ms at 44.1 kHz (43 ms at 48 kHz, 21 ms at 192 kHz), because that is one analysis frame. Ask for a synced subdivision shorter than that and it moves to the next whole multiple of its own grid step — it stays on the beat instead of landing off it. A tap set to no shift has no such limit: it skips the shifter entirely and goes down to a single sample, which is why this still works as an ordinary short delay.

Formant helps when a shifted vocal or a bass starts to sound cartoonish. It preserves the spectral envelope while the pitch moves.

MIDI, if you want it

Follow MIDI takes the reference note from the notes you play, so the note names on the graph match the part. MIDI Output sends the arpeggio on as MIDI: incoming notes come back out arpeggiated through the current intervals and timings, which another instrument can play. Both are optional. The plugin is an audio effect and needs no MIDI at all.

Four starting points

Goal	Shape / Scale	Motion / Spacing	Taps	Wet · Repeats
Answer a lead without crowding it	Rising Steps · pentatonic major	Up · degrees	6	35% · 30%
The dotted-eighth trick	Rising Steps · mixolydian	Up · degrees	6	42% · 44%
Pad that keeps blooming	Arch · lydian	Up-Down · octaves	6	50% · 50%
Let it take over	Scatter · chromatic	Random · degrees	8	55% · 72%

Those four are roughly what you hear in the demos on the product page — same input each time, only the builder changing.

Presets

The browser searches names, categories, descriptions and tags.

24 of them, in five categories: Rhythmic, Melodic, Ambient, Texture, Extreme. Each carries a line about what it is for, and the browser searches names, categories, descriptions and tags, so “guitar”, “dotted” or “pad” all find something. Save your own with Save As, and Import and Export move them between machines as files. Undo and redo cover preset loads too, so trying one is never destructive.