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Programming different chords?

Heyoo, is there a way to customize what chords you play? I hardly ever play in one key, and I’m missing having sevenths and major sevenths in my chord progressions. So excited to get to play with this new instrument!

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Currently there is not a way to use different chords. This feature is high up on our list.


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This would be very great if we can assign a custom chord notes by notes through the app. 
At the same time, I really look forward if we can assign note for pads on LEAD mode (e.g. blue scale, minor scale, or custom notes which across different octaves)

I love Orba so much, I can't get it off my hands. :D Thanks for Artiphon team! 


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Custom chords are defo a must - as are custom scales. It would be great to have a wide selection of scales and chords in a library to import onto the Orba, with custom options available for both too.


As the chord mode actually plays the chords in MIDI (i.e. sends note on's for the chord notes) this would be a massively useful feature for non-keybard instrument specialists (like me!).


Thank you for your input! This is pretty high up in our backlog.


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Cheers Arne!


Missing this feature keeps from buying one. I need to be able to enter chords i love to jam to!

Orba’s FAQ describe “ The 8 pads can be tuned to any note or chord. Using the cross-platform app presets with a different tuning can be loaded into Orba.”

How can I use my own notes or chords? There is no option to customize notes or chords in the app. Orba is, potentially, a great controller but more flexibility is needed to customize midi messages!

Hi Emiliano, if you working with midi your have more options. You can map a midi note to play any chord using midi filters in your sequencer software.


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Just Look in this Forum. There is a thread to customize the XML Files of the app to program different chords and Tunes.

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Thank you Dave and Stefan for your helpful replies.

You're not able to completely  customize the notes/chords even in the XML. There are a couple preset scale types which are used to drive the internal synth, which disregards the notes that are specified in the XML file. From what I can see in the source code of the app, this is due to those scale types (like "Major Pentatonic") being configuration values in the XML which drive hardcoded scale intervals/notes in the Orba app.

I wrote a utility and you can use it to create any custom chord or scale. It is located here:


https://github.com/subskybox/Orba


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