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What have you done with my chords Ma

 In July 2024 Artiphon released new firmware and a new version of the Connect app for the Chorda and Orba 2. This had a big effect on Chord presets and this was a big blow to me. I will try to explain it and what I have been trying to do to mitigate the damage it did to my use of the Orba 2 and the Chorda. The most obvious difference was that all chord presets by default play their standard chord set. Other chord sets defined in a preset are ignored and are no longer used. The standard set is OK, but it is restrictive and rather plain - but I could get round that by creating my own chord sets - I made a lot of them. That has now been stolen from us and instead the app only allows us two alternatives, the pentatonic chord set, again OK but even more restricted, and the chromatic set which bewilders me as I can find no rational to the choice (and placing) of the chords included, there's not even a basic set of chords for the chosen root key in there. (Another change was that the Chor
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About the new song feature on the Chorda

 With the Chorda a new feature with songs that seems to have confused people. Sadly Artiphon didn't explain it well which really didn't help. First let's understand the songs that come with the Chorda at the start. I should say here I get annoyed by their use of the word "song" in this context. Being old school, a song needs to be sung and have some degree of structure as minimums. Artiphon songs have neither, but never mind for now. The built-in songs are really just a set of settings. When you press "play" in the app you are setting the presets for each mode (Lead, Chord etc.), and also you set the key, the speed - Beats Per Minute, and the scale, Major or Minor. The Lead preset loaded will contain the setting for whether its scale is Pentatonic or Diatonic - that's not part of the song. These songs contain no musical content - I refer to them as "empty songs" in my own head. Once your Chorda has been set to a particular song you can chan
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A Tablature system for the Chorda and Orbas

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 After thinking about it for a while I have come up with a simple system for notating music on these devices. It was first thought up for Lead mode. It was written in Notepad and just to ensure the text doesn't get mangled being displayed on other systems I will show a .png file as well as the text content. Eventually I plan to make a pdf version. This is my first draft and I forgot to mention that this notation will work just as well for all other modes. It doesn't really need any adaption for them. Yo Yo Tablature for the Artiphon Chorda and Orba (1 and 2) instruments. NB: This tablature can be written using a plain text editor such as Notepad in Windows or (WHAT?) on Macs, however they do not define a line length and tablature may be altered when displayed where word wrapping and different sized windows are used. This will particularly some use of the Advanced features. Use a word processor and convert/save to PDF to ensure correct display for others and compatability. A sin
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Chords for the Chorda

This is about ten chord presets for the Chorda. Before you get too excited they all use the same sounds - a sample set for a section of strings. I didn't like the stringed instrument sounds on the Orba or Chorda so I have tried to get something I prefer. This is, I think, a good albeit synthy string sound. You can get an idea how it sounds at my previous post "A little thing you can do with Chorda Chords" although I have tweaked it a bit to sound and play better now. Since the sound "CelloBlue" sample set was working well I decided to try some things with chords and here we have the results. https://www.mediafire.com/file/saz9l1tjnlg6dnr/the_Blue_set.zip/file But I should explain what's there. BlueString-ST simply uses the Artiphon standard chord set - (ST for standard) Since I like flattened sevenths in both scales and chords BlueString-ST-f7 has one on pad 7. (f7 for flattened 7th). Adding Ext to the name means I used a pitch-bend trick so that you can get
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A small treat for the Orba 2 folk

I'm now offering three drum presets for the Orba 2. (They will work on a Chorda but they won't make much sense.) We have a Celtic PanDrum preset - with samples of course. I'm not that keen on it myself, but it's useful if you want these sounds. The other two are laid out with two different Japanese scales and are rather moody. Remember, these presets go in the Drum folder and the arrangement of the notes on the pads are intended to try and be as they would be on the real things. Get them here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/dumi5rdcloczlkk/PanDrums_for_Orbas.zip/file
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A little thing you can do with Chorda Chords

By chance I came across a technique using the arpeggio bridge when in Chord mode on the Chorda that is rather neat. I won't try and explain it - listen carefully and you should get the idea. The only technique you need to use is to overlap your touches when moving between chords, very slightly will do. (This is my first attempt at putting up audio to play  and I'm not sure it's working. If you're reading this and it's not - my apologies! Right click and you can download the mp3 just copy the link address.) There is no trickery in this brief recording except that I faded out the final chord in Audacity. There is no trickery in this brief recording except that I faded out the final chord in Audacity.
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A Bunch of presets for your Chordas and Orba 2s

 Here we go, bass presets to enable you to do more, lead presets to have some new sounds and greater range. There's even a drum kit there.  No chord presets though - this is because almost all the ones I have made for the Orba 2 get spoilt by the way the Chorda treats them. When I've got a handle on that I hope to start adding some other treats. Mostly diatonic and with versions that allow you play all those black notes you couldn't before. And a couple of surprises. Bear in mind that if you load the presets that use my samples they will take up storage space on your device. That shouldn't be a problem unless you have been wildly making loads of your own samples - and even then it will probably been some time before it matters. (I have a lot of other sample sets on my testing Orba and it's just fine.) Those that use existing Artiphon samples are no problem. Do read the notes that come with these presets, and you will benefit if you also look at my OrbaAlternatives P
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