unfortunately I have to agree. I dont understand why the goal wouldnt simply to be LESS restrictive in all ways over time.
For instance why not just let us map anything, and groups of anythings, to whatever keys we want? Just release another version of the software/firmware that turns the whole thing into more of a blank slate. YOU LITERALLY CANNOT LOSE BY DOING THIS.
The physical format of the Orbas and the Chorda (which I like) means there will always have limits to what they can do. That has to be accepted. In my work in the past I met a lot of non-musicians (daily) who wanted to make music and every one said they wanted to learn, but Artiphon's approach is against that idea despite what they proudly say. Their upgrades are more like downgrades in that respect - and it seems to me they are not prepared to learn themselves. For me that is frustrating, for the many others it seems to me fundamentally sad and a rather shameful direction to go. (A bit of learning and they could have done much, much better.)
It is also sad that there seems to have been little reaction to the recent changes - I don't think that is because they like them - I think it has just driven them to put their devices in cupboards and forget about them feeling they wasted their money.
I will miss some of the interesting ChordLists in some of the user created presets, but they do still work for the Orba 1 (since it didn't get this update.
Did they make a way to change to Chromatic from the Chorda keyboard or is it just from the app?
I made a lot of chord presets with custom chord sets - all now redundant.
Artiphon have said nothing except about the app changes. I presume they hoped no-one would notice the other stuff.
Another unfortunate side effect is that you used to be able to have some of your presets that were loaded on the Chorda be diatonic and some be pentatonic. Now they are all one or the other (or chromatic)
Hmm, haven't tried this, but if you have a 'song' that is made with a pentatonic Lead but you have Lead set to diatonic does it then load diatonic?
I have not had a problem with lead and bass presets - but I almost exclusively use my own presets which are made to be diatonic, except a few where I attempt to emulate instruments like the south eastern zithers. They seem to work as usual. But the changes to chords still pain me, they now seem to all sound same-ish and so vanilla. They only good thing is that it has forced me to find different methods to get what I want from my devices.
I confess I don't use "songs" - I go old school and multitrack on a daw or 8 track recorder. I think the preset should play in what is defined in the song file - the issue might be whether the system saves a song to say what you intended it to. From comments I've seen elsewhere that may not always happen.
@Rpneal - The bass and chord presets were always diatonic - which made good sense. While switching to pentatonic or chromatic might be useful sometimes what they offer is pathetic. If they have messed that up for songs as you are concerned about they have done even greater damage, and I would be even more disappointed that people haven't voiced their anger about it. (I'm not sure song files can be modified like mode presets - I only tried one or two a long while ago and they weren't successful so I forgot about them.)
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 don't 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.