Orba 2 Alternative

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

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.

 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

 You can get something like a guitar strumming effect using any preset where the sounds have a short duration (make your own?).  (Actually if the sound is loud at the start but fades down to a low level quickly that will work too.) It works best in Lead mode when a chord preset which has the chords you want has been selected (any sound). Now you choose your Lead preset (with the short sounds). The first press of a pad gives a sort of initial bass note and then the bridge can be strummed for the chord that would be played on that pad in Chord mode. A quick try with this worked very well. (If your Lead preset uses the semitone pitch bend trick you can also get  the chords shifted by a semitone too.) In chord mode your first touch of the pad will sound the whole chord rather than a single note, which is not so great for this effect, but it still works. The preset will need to have the sound you want and the chords you want in this case.

Perhaps I should explain what I have been doing with modified and created presets. Presets that use the built in synth can be made with the Preset Creator. There's not real need to do other than use it, however there are tweaks that can (and perhaps should be done) before they get loaded onto your Orba 2 or Chorda. I always save the product of the Creator app to a working folder and there I can add my own name and description to my work. I mostly add an image to be used in the app for it. Sometimes they are new images of my own, sometimes I re-use existing images from Artiphon. I also ensure that two parameters, "readOnly" and "factory" are set to "0" so that I can tweak the presets later or delete them if I don't like them after all. These things apply to all presets. Presets made in the Creator app use a single sample. That can give good results but it's likely that it doesn't. The recording quality of the samples used is also important s

 I now know a bit more about chords on the Chorda. First - chord sets with 12 chords defined, one for each of the pads in the major and minor scales will not break the preset but the last four will be ignored and the definitions for pads 2 - 5 used instead, but shifted up an octave. (I really wanted to use them for 7th chords or chords with other added notes.) Second -  it is possible to create presets with six notes for each chord. However, the Chorda will ignore the extra note definitions. (I haven't tested this on the Orba - since it isn't going to handle it anyway it is a pointless exercise.) It might be nice to have this but I admit it's probably not of such a benefit - I wouldn't mind if the pads were playing only four note chords anyway. That's two opportunities missed by Artiphon. I would hope that 12 chord sets might eventually made possible, but I wouldn't expect it. Even less likely they would add six note chords, I would suggest. What seems to be cle