typo there: should have said "Yes you can be creative but only if you don't do anything that tries to be different."
I find the latest firmware to feel pretty stable.. I had been playing with my Orba 2 a few times this week encouraged by some of the recent posts. I hadn't discovered that the custom chords no longer work. I bet some of this stability comes from moving things from RAM to ROM.. Unfortunately this has a huge negative impact on creativity!
I can confirm this is correct. I loaded the standard 7th Chords sound with the latest firmware and the chords are coming out as standard chords. I reverted to firmware 1.2.3 and instantly the 7th Chords were fixed. I'm thinking this is a bug rather than a new direction. Let's find out! I will raise it as a bug.
@Subskybox
Thanks for these comments it confirms what I had suspected. My initial reaction to the firmware changes was over the top I admit, but I stick to the principles of why I didn't like it.
I have since noticed that on the Chorda there is another change. You may not be aware of this but the Chorda was sounding six notes when playing any chord on the pads. How the extra notes sounded were decided is a mystery I couldn't fathom - it didn't seem to be consistent, custom chord sets that worked well on the Orba on the Chorda some chords would sound high pitched notes which spoilt the set. I was unhappy with that, but I found, although it was a problem, it was possible to work around it to some degree. (Others noted that this was a problem with some of Artiphon's own presets - not just my own custom sets.)
On the Chorda the new firmware has reduced the number of notes sounding to four. So I think it would now play chords as they would on the Orba. The arpeggio bridge bar still plays six notes - that makes sense even if some of the notes are not ideal. While some would dislike that change (if they noticed) I see that as a good change. So the problem is that while doing that for the Chorda they made the other change and applied that to both devices.
Whether that's a bug or a deliberate change I can't judge - it was only when I realised there was the second change that I saw there was a valid reason for a change.
To put it simply, when you make a custom chord set for the Orba you got what you asked for - on the Chorda you got unwanted additions to that.
The odd thing is that the changes seem to be made to address an issue on the Chorda but it has been applied to the Orba 2 - which doesn't have the problem.
There is an indication that this was a deliberate planned move, not a bug. One of the recent added presets from Artiphon (Back Roads) has no chord set defined in it at all - suggesting they knew it wouldn't be needed.
The new version of the Connect app reveals what they are trying to do. While I'm sure it contains things that many will welcome it's a step backwards to me. (And I think it could have been done in a better way - the benefits are rather hidden away when they could have been made more accessible.)
I just downloaded the latest and I also see where they are headed. Interesting choice of chords for Chromatic. Reminds me of an exercise I used to play on the piano. I did file a bug however to see how they respond. The bug states that the Chord Preset 7th Chords no longer plays 7th Chords. It's been a while since I searched through the code. Maybe I'll have a look and see if they've left behind and clues as to where they are headed. At least if you could choose modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian) that would be a step in the right direction!
My take on it is that they were trying to appease those who use the devices as midi controllers. What I don't get is why those folk aren't more vocal about getting ways to get more different chords. As far as the modal scales I'm not bothered myself - I do use Dorian (I think it is - flattened 7th) but I can workaround that easily. I think those scales will have problems with chords - that isn't so much a problem on the Orba as it would be on the Chorda where the bridge plays the notes from chords. I can't see the chords in the chromatic chords as anything but a way of sending the midi codes to a daw where they can be edited/ moved around etc.
(However quite why they blocked the modal scales when they didn't really need to I don't get - it was only ever going to be a small group of people who would take the time and effort to play with them and so not create much in the way of problems.)
Just noticed an Artiphon preset named "Open" which boasts its different chord set plays only the standard set now of course.
Here is my bug submission and their response:
Subskybox:
The 7th Chords preset no longer voices as 7th chords after update to firmware 1.3.1. Instead, they voice just the standard major/minor chords. By reverting to firmware 1.2.3, they are restored.
Artiphon Support:
Hi, thanks for reaching out.
This is expected behavior, as we just released a major app update that gives you the ability to select what scale each part is set to. This means that chord voicings and scales are no longer on a preset basis, but on an instrument global setting basis.
Unfortunately, this means that 7th Chords won't be available for a bit, as we continue to add more chord sets to the Select Your Scale section of the app. Instead, you now have the ability to access chords built on Diatonic, Pentatonic, and Chromatic root notes.
To access the Set Your Scale feature, make sure your app and firmware are both up to date, and stay tuned for the release of 7th Chords as an option in the Set Your Scale menu!
@Subskybox - Well that shows you got it right about what was happening, well done. While I think this takes creative possibilities away from us there are good possibilities. What would have been amazing would be to move chord sets into their own files that could be applied to any preset (and we could modify!). I didn't see a chord set full of 7th chords as useful so I will not be anxiously looking forward to that. It feels as if they don't actually know any thing about how harmony works in real life and I don't have great hopes that anything they add in the way of chords will be truly useful. We'll see perhaps.
As I said elsewhere - the more we let tech make decisions for us the dumber we get.
David Benton
The recent firmware updates have made chord presets ignore the ChordLists defined in the preset and instead only play their standard chord set. (That set is OK in itself but it is anodyne, limited and plain.) This means it is now pointless to try and make modified presets to play alternative chord sets.
Of course this is not supported by Artiphon, which I respect, but they knew some were doing things like this and even seemed to have learnt from things from them.
They could have left things alone and let us be creative - but no, they want us to walk in the path of dull mediocracy.
Yes you can be creative but only if you do anything that tries to be different.
What angers me more than how it affects how I use my devices is that it shows an attitude which no society should tolerate.
Shame on your Artiphon.