...looking at the .artipreset file for Horror Drums, sampleIndex 0-7 corresponds to pads 1-8, while sampleIndex 8 is Bump. Not sure how you access 9-13.
...I've never played a Handpan but I've been interested in them and the possibility of building a MIDI one for some time. There have been three commercial attempts at this that I'm aware of; the Oval (discontinued), the Lumen (on hold due to the chip shortage), and the Wavepan. My plan is to make one out of a hubcap with a set of piezos and a Teensy; working title the "Wheeldrum". Meanwhile...
If you want a ninth "Ding" note it may be possible to use the "Bump" gesture. Eg For the "Horror drums" sample set, bump sounds like BPM_Horror_Downfall_FX06
Steel tongue drums (hand pans, etc.) tend to be tuned to pentatonic scales similar to Orba lead presets. If they have a ding (the center bump), many of them don't, then it does tend to be tuned to the root of the scale, but sometimes it's tuned to the 5th of the scale below the lowest root note. This might be done to compensate for "high" tunings based on the size of the drum, and it might be done to increase the range of notes depending on how many notes are available on the drum. On drums with only 8 notes and no ding (center bump), it's common for the lowest note to be one note below the root of the pentatonic scale so that you can drop down below the root on your patterns. In NON STANDARD notation, where the pentatonic scale would be 1-2-3-4-5, the tuning might be something like 5-1-2-3-4-5-1-2 so that you can play just below and just above the root notes. So, let's say I was playing a steel tongue drum with only eight notes and NO DING (middle bump), I would expect the pads to ALTERNATE either left-right or right-left, and either from top to bottom or bottom to top. Most common is left-right from bottom to top, and I would expect the notes to be B, D, E, F#, A, B, D, E.
D Major Pentatonic Scale: D, E, F#, A, B
Major Pentatonic Formula: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6
Notes on 8 Note Drum: B, D, E, F#, A, B, D, E
Most Common Layout
D E A B E F# B D
I found a great collection of Pan Drum samples online. There are a number of samples at different velocities for various notes. What type of scales do Pan Drums usually have? It seems the center is generally the root note but you can't assign a tone to the A button :(
I suppose I could assign the root note to Pad 1. I'm going to try to make a Pan Drum in a fixed key as a Drum Preset (a.k.a. it will not respond to Key changes). If I can figure it out, I may be able to make a Lead out of it in the future
I made the name and used ThomKit as the base. In retrospect, I should have used TaetroKit which is a cleaner template to start from. I haven't tried with Stereo samples yet. From the Orba1 teardown does the Orba have stereo speakers? Or would it only be from the headphone jack? I have some tweaks I need to do and will upload another Preset.
One thing I found out is that you can change the subfolder property and pick and choose. This is great because you can make your own collection of Drum sounds from all the samples on the device. Pick the best of the best to make your own kit. That only requires a new .artipreset file. Start with TaetroKit and then pick your favorite .wav references. Many drum kits have more than 9 sounds. Sometimes 16 or 17 sounds. This suggests that Artiphon will allow you to customize in the future.
I'm not sure whether there was an original Technokit, which you edited, or whether Technokit was a new name...?
(Eg stereo sample example)
I think it put the folder on the Orba itself, but if you can put together another preset file I'd like to test the process again because I muddled things up a bit this time.
Maybe you could include a stereo sample file like the one attached; I'm interested in seeing if it can handle those. I also noticed that most of the samples are 48KHz but the test ones were 44KHz; I think this might have caused a pitch shift.
@BJG145 I'm guessing its because I did not add UUIDs to the wav files.. Did your app happen to append UUIDs to the .wav filenames?
Nice. I've been struggling to get it to push the samples to the device unless I copy them to MSC manually. I think my machines are unreliable for serial file transfer. Also I realized I zipped in a bunch of .DSStore files by accident. They can all be deleted. Editing the factory and readOnly properties in the .artipreset file controls whether you can DELETE the Preset from the UI.
To confirm, you did not have to copy samples into MSC manually and the app synchronized on its own? I've had issues similar to "SubSkyKit". I've come to realize that it seems the app builds a cache of required files in "C:\Users\<USER>\Documents\Artiphon\Orba\app.properties" and it helps to remove it from there. I'm trying to figure out the process of distributing custom Presets but it seems my machines are not reliable :(
I got in a bit of a tangle with this initially, probably by adding it to the pubic folder instead of the user one. But I ended up changing all the references to "SubSkyKit", made a fresh start with this in the user folder, and it all worked fine. The samples synced automatically. Nice one.
Also you should be able to drag the Common folder from the zip to the Documents/Artiphon folder and Windows should give you the option to merge. This can be done on Mac as well by holding the <Option> key when dragging/dropping.
@GabrielVelasco
Here is a kit I made from Garageband sounds. If you add these to the correct places it should work?
@BJG145 Would you mind giving it a try? It works for me if I add to the MSC folder but hoping that adding it to the Preset folder will allow you to select "Send to Orba".
Sounds promising, cheers...
Chris Hernandez
Hi Artiphon,
Any updates on whether/when there will be added functionality to the Orba 2 app allowing for user-customizable drum presets? I realize there are only 2gb of space available, but would love even just 2-4 customizable preset slots on the desktop app where I could assign all 9 keys. I primarily use my Orba 2 for on-the-go songwriting, and having a drum kit that matches the sound(s) I'm going for would be huge.
I realize that in order for the functionality to fully transfer on iOS, the user would probably need to send the drum sample files with unmodified file names to the associated preset folder on their phone. I've already done this with custom bass presets from OrbaSynth and I don't think it would be a problem for anyone with mid-level technical prowess. I think this feature would exponentially boost the value of the Orba 2 for anyone interested in quick, on-the-go production.
I'm about to write another request/problem I'm having with OrbaSynth, which is otherwise incredibly useful from a production standpoint. Planning on making a youtube review video as well. Thanks for keeping the updates coming, super excited for what's to come!
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