Chords and the Chorda - a bit more

 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 clear is that for pad 1 -7 the Chorda takes the 2nd and 4th notes defined in a chord are raised an octave to create the two extra notes the Chorda plays. For the arpeggio bridge the six resulting notes are put in order from low to high. Since on pads 9 - 12 are effectively raised an octave already the Chorda seems to do something different with the extra two notes - at this point I'm not sure what that is. It's a bit of a brain teaser and I'm not sure I can be bothered trying to work it out. 

I have noticed that the ordering of notes on the bridge can sometimes break the low to high ordering on the bridge, particularly when the chord is from pads 9-12, but I guess it's not a huge issue to most people (including me).

The main reason I explored this issue is because it can make creating your own chord sets for modified presets rather tricky. And some sets that work well on the Orba 2 get spoilt by the octave shifts and it's not a fun exercise to try and adjust them to work well on the Chorda.

 Making more varied chord sets can create some really fine sounds for the instrument.

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