Sonar has an arpeggiator too - that's what I used on the "Heavy" track. Relatively simple though, no creating your own patterns... I must actually scout around for a comprehensive arpeggiator.
For instance, I understand it can take a waveform as input, like from a guitar. Not acting as a guitar synth, but taking the guitar waveform as one of its oscillators... becoming a very fancy guitar effects unit basically. Ever tried that?
Guilty! ? It takes you a lot further than just being an effect though - it's really analogue synthesis. So if you know a bit about additive and subtractive synthesis, you can get up to all kinds of mischief. ?
Guitar rig lets you use any signal as a controller by using the modifiers - they have an envelope follower (they call it "Input Level") which can be used to control any parameter (or multiple parameters). So I've often used it to control the amplitude, drive or even panning with another signal. The "usual" way to use this is with a bandpass filter, controlling the cutoff frequency of the filter to create an autowah. However, you can control
any parameter within Guitar Rig, so you could control the resonance instead...
...or too (!) - you can assign
multiple parameters to any controller/modifier. So you can easily create a panning autowah. You can also set the range and polarity of each parameter, so you can do things like: have a deep autowah with subtle panning; or two effects chains that swap sides in the stereo spectrum, based on how hard you pick; or anything else your fevered imagination can come up with.
The other modifiers LFO, Envelope (fixed envelope, not a follower - you draw the envelope you want it to produce when triggered), Analog Sequencer and Step Sequencer are all just as powerful.
Sometimes I'll use one of the drum mic tracks (or even a drum submix) to get the guitar parameter locked into the beat in an unusual way - similar to the way you'll "key" a bass tone in with a kick drum using a sidechain compressor. The one downside to this is Guitar Rig can only work on two signals at once, and they must be on a stereo input, so you have to do some outboard routing or use it as an insert on a submix to use one track to control another.
I'll often fiddle with amplitude modulating a synth sound with the guitar sound to get the two locked in tight and to give the synth sound the same dynamics as the guitar. The advantage with using a guitar and guitar synth signal as a modulator/carrier combo is that, unlike a ring modulator (which uses a single frequency LFO), the pitch of the two can be harmonically related, so you can end up with much more musical results.
I could go on... :-[
