Artiphon Orba

[BJG145]

After the Instrument One, I see Artiphon are back on Kickstarter with their second musical gadget; the Orba.

I don't think this will be one for me, but I'm glad to see they're still innovating.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ar ... &term=midi

[Drew Stephenson]

Potentially fascinating little device and at a dangerously tempting price!

[Martin Walker]

Indeed - I could get tempted by this!

Martin

[BJG145]

Someone sent me this link to a page advertising an apparently identical product called the "Hand-A" for £15. Must be a scam I guess.

[BJG145]

...a year and a half later...

I recently picked up a "faulty" Artiphon Orba going cheap on eBay, though it turned out to be fine. And I've been having fun with this little gadget. I like things I can stick in my bag and carry around with me.

I wasn't especially interested when it first appeared, as it seemed too simple, but having spent a bit of time with the Artiphon Instrument recently I thought I'd give it a go, as they seem to come up with cool stuff.

It basically has eight pads which you can use to record and play simple looped songs using drum, bass, chord and lead sounds from its simple built-in synth. It responds to various types of expression like finger position/coverage/tilt/shake, and can also be used as a wireless MPE MIDI controller. It has a "buzz" haptic feedback feature which adds to the playability.

It's naturally quite a limited thing and I started to wonder if it was more of a toy than an instrument. My main problem with it is that although you can map notes however you like if you use it with something like Ableton Live, the built-in sounds (and it has its own speaker as well as headphone jack) are fixed in a very restrictive way. You can play major/minor/pentatonic scales, change the key and octave, and...that's it. (You can't even change key without configuring it via the app.)

Playing pentatonic scales on eight pads gets boring quite fast, so I turned to the forum to see if there was a way round it. And there is. But what I find surprising is that this has been sought out entirely through the efforts of a bunch of XML hackers exchanging ideas on the Artiphon Orba official forum, without any help or encouragement from the developers. This thing could be so much better if they developed the app for it further. The community has figured out how to dive in and change undocumented parameters to control the synth found in the app's XML preset files, escaping from the limited range of sounds available otherwise. And by trial and error and random tinkering, they've also figured out how to create user-definable scales for the bass and lead sounds, although you can't change the key on these or they revert to the dreaded pentatonics.

After spending several hours messing around with this, I've discovered that it's possible to separate the tuning hack from the rest of the preset, meaning that you can load the same XML file to retune any sound. I've just been documenting it on their forum, and I'm pleased I could add something. But I really think it's time Artiphon took things further themselves. 7/10 for the hardware, 3/10 for the software so far.

[Arpangel]

It’s one of those things that looks potentially really useful, but in the real world, I’m not sure, and then you say "but can it do this" and the answers are "almost, but not quite"
Like to try one.

[BJG145]

I have to admit I'm kind of enjoying hacking the XML. Currently trying to figure out how chord patterns are defined. (They're narrowly fixed as well.) I should get a life really.

[Folderol]

I should get a life really.

Why? You'll only go and lose it again at some point

[BJG145]

Touché.

Check out some dorian-infused Orba jamming. This is bleeding-edge stuff.

https://soundcloud.com/qchord/dorian/s-EHRvCu2vB7A

[BJG145]

*** time passes ***

I have to admit I'm kind of enjoying hacking the XML. Currently trying to figure out how chord patterns are defined. (They're narrowly fixed as well.) I should get a life really.

Nice surprise today, someone has taken my work on this forward and given me a shout-out on GitHub for their groundbreaking Orba Chord Fiddler.

https://github.com/subskybox/Orba

(Yep, still haven't got a life yet.)

[ManFromGlass]

this is definitely a life! Good stuff!

[BJG145]

In other Orba news, Artiphon have announced the Orba 2.

https://artiphon.com/pages/orba

The new version will feature increased processing and memory, user samples, and quantisation.

The announcement hasn't been universally welcomed by the Orba community who have been waiting for two years for quantisation to be added to the Orba 1, with Artiphon claiming this was high on their list of priorities. It looks unlikely to happen now.

I can't see any indication that they've addressed the lack of custom chords and scales. V1 offers major, minor and pentatonic out of the box, and that's it. In general, Artiphon seems to have decided to focus on simple music toys for non-musicians, which is a bit of a pity, because the products could be more than that.

There's good news with the aforementioned "Chord Fiddler" app though, because it turns out this can be used to create custom scales as well as custom chords. So with this added flexibility, I expect I'll pick up an Orba 2. I'm a sucker for pocket-sized music gadgets.

[Arpangel]

Touché.

Check out some dorian-infused Orba jamming. This is bleeding-edge stuff.

https://soundcloud.com/qchord/dorian/s-EHRvCu2vB7A

My edge is bleeding, profusely.
Another gimmick looking for a market.
On second thoughts, that was a bit harsh.

[BJG145]

Another gimmick looking for a market.

If you look back to the SOS interview at NAMM 2014 it seemed like an interesting company, but they've dumbed down since then.

https://www.soundonsound.com/news/summe ... nt-1-video

[Arpangel]

Another gimmick looking for a market.

If you look back to the SOS interview at NAMM 2014 it seemed like an interesting company, but they've dumbed down since then.

https://www.soundonsound.com/news/summe ... nt-1-video

Wow, that looked really promising,

[BJG145]

I recently took a leap into the unknown and made random code changes all over the place, which resulted in the Orba becoming completely unresponsive; couldn't even turn it on.

Fortunately the firmware update instructions brought it back to life. So when I saw a faulty Orba on eBay that wouldn't turn on the other day, I thought...aha, I'll give you £25 for that.

Just turned up, and quickly revived it. A couple of minutes' work with a hot glue gun, and voila - a dual-manual version. The Orba Diabolo.



Hot glue is great. It holds things quite securely, but if you change your mind you can break it off.

With the new-found scale hacking knowledge I can configure this beauty for over an octave chromatic, or self-accompany with chords+lead.

[resistorman]

I recently took a leap into the unknown and made random code changes all over the place, which resulted in the Orba becoming completely unresponsive; couldn't even turn it on.

Fortunately the firmware update instructions brought it back to life. So when I saw a faulty Orba on eBay that wouldn't turn on the other day, I thought...aha, I'll give you £25 for that.

Just turned up, and quickly revived it. A couple of minutes' work with a hot glue gun, and voila - a dual-manual version. The Orba Diabolo.



Hot glue is great. It holds things quite securely, but if you change your mind you can break it off.

With the new-found scale hacking knowledge I can configure this beauty for over an octave chromatic, or self-accompany with chords+lead.

Well done! Hmmmm, I suppose you could glue four or so to a ball...

[Martin Walker]

Nice work BJG145 - looking forward to watching a video of you using it in action

[BJG145]

I thought it would be cool to get the Orba Diabolo playing beats while I juggled it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkTGrFsYIcI

I had a quick practice with a USB lead, but it dropped on the carpet and fell apart.

Diabolo juggling is harder than it looks. I'll try again after I've stuck it back together.

[resistorman]

I thought it would be cool to get the Orba Diabolo playing beats while I juggled it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkTGrFsYIcI

I had a quick practice with a USB lead, but it dropped on the carpet and fell apart.

Diabolo juggling is harder than it looks. I'll try again after I've stuck it back together.

Can't wait!

[Martin Walker]

For the first few seconds I thought that was you Ben, before the penny dropped

[BJG145]

Time to get serious.

[ManFromGlass]

Will you be combining the Orbas with this? Looks like it could be a cause of great fun or damage!