Chords and the Chorda

 There is something interesting (and also potentially annoying) about the way the Chorda handles Chords.

At this point in time I am guessing what is happening.

To explain I need to go back to the Orba. The chord presets contain definitions of the notes to be sounded in  each chord in relation to the pad (according to it's place in a diatonic major or minor scale). You define four pitches and you get those four notes. It doesn't matter what order they are in.

The Chorda, however, makes six notes from these four defined pitches. My guess is that the first two defined pitches are raised an octave to create the two extra notes. This may seem sensible and of no consequence. But it does make a big difference. (You can get a better idea of this by playing the individual notes in the arpeggiator bridge.)

When you create a chord set you will want to pay attention to what the highest note in the chords are. It's important to how we hear a chord. On the Orba that's simple - the highest defined pitch is the highest note you hear in a chord. On the Chorda, the highest note may become one of the pitches that is raised an octave. I would guess these are the first two defined. (When creating a chord set you are like to start at the bottom and work up - but you might choose to do it the other way round, or more randomly. It doesn't matter on the Orba.) However, on the Chorda the order they are defined suddenly becomes important and chord sets that work well on the Orba have chords that sound out of place on the Chorda with strangely high notes sounding prominently on some chords.

Artiphon are very unlikely to to clarify anything about this even if they were talking to us, which, at the moment they are not. And it might take someone with better ears and more patience than I have too establish what is really happening.

As an aside, it is also interesting what when pitch bend is applied on the pad, as I do with many of my own made presets, the chord notes played on the arpeggiator bridge are also pitch shifted. Whether that's a good thing or not I am not decided - it does allow some things that would otherwise be impossible, but it could also be deeply annoying. (It may also be the same with using tilt for pitch bending - I haven't tested that yet.)