Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid is a fantastic chord generator from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, but can it appeal to dance music producers too?
Telepathic Instruments describe their synthesizer Orchid as an ideas machine. The Orchid ORC-1 (to use its full name) sprung from the mind of Kevin Parker, he of Tame Impala fame. You can read more about how it came to be in our interview with Telepathic’s technical director, Tom Cosm, but the TL;DR version is Kevin wanted a chord generator for personal songwriting, and this developed into a finished product, one that has taken the music production world by storm. While some of its popularity is undoubtedly because of Kevin, Orchid, it must be said, is a fantastic instrument in its own right.
Given that it was originally designed for an indie music songwriter, how appropriate is Orchid (and its companion software app, Pistil) for dance and electronic music? That’s what we’re here today to find out.
Orchid Overview
Orchid is, as previously mentioned, an ideas machine. It’s meant for helping you work through chord progressions and, as such, is more of a song starter than a song finisher. Think the hardware you reach for to get your initial ideas down before moving to the DAW to take things over the finish line. Accordingly, it’s very inspirational, with a lot of intuitive features that make music-making fun.
Looking something like a piece of 1970s tech, the instrument gives you a single octave of (stylishly all black) keys on the right, and a set of eight chord buttons on the left. By holding down buttons corresponding to different chord types (major, minor, suspended, diminished, sixths, minor sevenths, major sevenths, and ninths) and playing notes, you can create chord progressions. And, if you want to monkey around with the note order of your chord, turn the Voicing dial while you play. It’s just that easy.
If you’re unfamiliar with music theory and want to make sure your chords fit the song you’re working on, you can set the key to a major or minor scale to keep things in line. There’s also a bass engine to generate low notes to accompany your chords.
To ensure things stay interesting, you can select a Perform mode for the chord. This includes strums, arpeggios, and other ways to spread out the notes beyond the usual uniform stacks. These can be synced to tempo as well so they stay rhythmically locked.
And speaking of tempo, the instrument has a selection of beats to play along with, programmed in modern styles like trap, disco and techno. Think of it like an ‘80s Casio toy keyboard updated for the 21st century. The rhythms also come in handy when using the audio looper to capture chord progression ideas on the go. And speaking of, Orchid has a nice set of onboard speakers plus a built-in, eight-hour battery.
The Sound of Orchid
Special mention needs to be made of the internal sound engine. Although you can use it as a MIDI controller (more on this in a minute), Orchid sounds amazing on its own. Inside is a digital engine (well, two actually – the bass has a duplicate of the main synth) with three synthesis types: virtual analog, a physically modeled electric piano, and FM. Adjustments are limited to effects and filter, although you can save these edits as user presets, but given the fact that they were programmed by Kevin himself, you may not want to. They really are beautiful, if a little (unsurprisingly) indie rock focused.
However, with Pistil, the standalone app and plugin version of the sound engine, you can remotely program sounds just as you would any other synthesizer. This is convenient if you’re working with Orchid in a DAW and want to use its onboard sounds. Pistil also acts as a patch librarian. It should be noted that Pistil is not free for Orchid Owners, however, and costs £99.
Orchid In Use
Orchid is fun and intuitive to use, but how does it fare when doing electronic music? Can dance music producers get as much out of it as traditional songwriters? Let’s find out.
We start by using it as intended: as an on-the-go ideas machine. We turn up the volume of the on-board speakers, plop it on our lap, and try making some chords. To keep things harmonically tight, we lock it to a key and then play notes on the keyboard until we find a progression that moves us. We then load up a Beat and record it via the looper.
Our loop captured directly:
That was fun and easy to do. Next, let’s do the same thing but this time, let’s use Orchid as a MIDI controller via USB-C. We load up a soft synth in our DAW and play notes with the Key parameter engaged. Once we have something we like, we capture it as MIDI in the DAW.
Orchid chords via a soft synth:
Lastly, let’s use the instrument in its full capacity as a MIDI controller. Orchid outputs on three separate MIDI channels: Perform mode on channel 1, Bass on channel 2, and Chords on 3. We set up three tracks, each with a different soft synth set to the appropriate channel, arm them all, and capture a progression using a combination of keys and chord buttons.
Three soft synths controlled by Orchid:
Orchid In Conclusion
Orchid is undeniably a quality product. It’s extremely intuitive to use. It’s also very musical in the way that it generates chords. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll be cranking out useful chord progressions within minutes of getting it out of the box.
However, Orchid is not going to do everything for you. If you’re an established musician like Kevin Parker, it makes for a quick way to get ideas down. If you’re used to throwing chords into your DAW from MIDI packs, however, this isn’t going to make you into an instant music theory expert. There are no suggestions for what chord to try next. There are no genre lists. Although Orchid does helpfully display the chord name on its (admittedly gorgeous OLED display), you’re going to want to write your chord progression ideas down somewhere because it won’t remember the progression for you. Telepathic includes a notebook in the box for this very reason. If you need hardware that’s going to hold your hand, AlphaTheta’s Chordcat and its Chord Cruiser mode may be a wiser purchase.
Telepathic is actively working on firmware updates, and there are a few things we’d love to see make it into a future revision. More scales would be appreciated, as would the ability to capture not only audio with the looper but MIDI too, so we could send that out to our DAW after the fact. We’d also like to be able to charge the unit and use MIDI over USB-C at the same time, something that is unfortunately not possible now (although there is also a five-pin MIDI port).
Is Orchid useful for dance music producers? As technical director Tom Cosm said in our interview, “I would say that people who are in genres that are already melodic in nature, like house and UKG, would probably find this a bit more fun to play with than, say, techno or drum & bass.” If you’re looking for a way to expand your chords and harmony, Orchid is much more fun than pulling MIDI files blind from a folder. You might even learn something along the way.
Ultimately, Orchid is fantastic not only as a chord machine but also as an instrument in its own right. It’s on the expensive side, and it really is a shame that Pistil isn’t included in the purchase price, but Orchid could be just the inspiration that you need to take your tracks to the next musical level.
[rating buy=”Telepathic Instruments Orchid ORC-1″ price=”$699″ link=”https://telepathicinstruments.com/products/orchid-orc-1″ build=”4″ value=”4″ versatility=”4″ sound=”5″ ease_of_use=”5″ overall=”4.5″ text=”More than just a chord machine.”]
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