Ideal for beginners as well as pro musicians, the Chorda is a unique hands-on instrument. Greg Scarth finds out what makes this clever device so versatile.
Nashville’s Artiphon proudly claim to make instruments for everyone, “from professional musicians to bedroom producers to social creators to everyday people who need a break from unending video calls”. Unsurprisingly, that appeals a lot to us. The new Artiphon Chorda is a hands-on, beginner-friendly instrument with built-in sounds and a speaker. It’s also a controller for music software and quietly packs some advanced features which will work nicely for serious musicians and performers. Available in a range of colours including black, white and blue, the Chorda could be seen as a much more advanced version of the original Artiphon Instrument 1, released back in 2022.
The Chorda looks pretty much like a guitar fretboard – or maybe the neck of a violin – reimagined as an electronic instrument. It’s around 44 centimetres long, 6 cm wide and just 3 cm deep, giving it an appealing, tactile feel. In fact, you can hold it like a guitar or a violin, play it flat on a table or just rest it on your lap. Each of the 12 sections on the instrument behaves a little like a fret on a guitar fretboard, allowing you to trigger notes across a full octave. A thinner touch-sensitive ‘bridge’ section allows you to strum or pick notes.
There are interesting parallels with the Suzuki Omnichord here. We reviewed the latest Omnichord reboot recently and were charmed by the way it inspires you to play chords, strum arpeggios over the top of them or improvise melodies which fall in key with your performance. There are plenty of similarities here in the way that the Chorda encourages you to loop, lay down a beat, jam out some chords and a bassline, then perform over the top of them.
The Chorda is a proper modern take on a portable instrument, with a built-in lithium battery chargeable over a standard USB connection and a very good internal speaker. Everything about it feels enticing whether you’re a complete newcomer to music making or more experienced. The built-in synth engine is an all-rounder designed to do a little bit of everything. The Chorda is based around separate drum, bass, chord and lead parts which play simultaneously from their own individual tracks. Spread across those four parts are hundreds of presets built into the unit, accessible by holding the (A) button near the ‘bridge’, selecting the appropriate part and sliding up or down the bridge to select. The onboard sounds of the Chorda are fun if not necessarily cutting edge, although we can understand why Artiphon would play it quite safe with the standard on-board sounds, and you can edit and change them if you want.
In terms of playing the Chorda, there’s a lot of overlap with the miniature Orba instrument which was released a couple of years ago. We liked the engrossing, user-friendly nature of the Orba and the Chorda builds upon it. Holding down the (A) button allows you to activate recording mode and start recording a loop. You could record drums first, for example, and then layer bass and chords on top before switching to lead mode and playing melodies over the top. It’s at this point that you really discover the expressive nature of the Chorda, with various different ways to play and modulate notes. Tapping on the pads or bridge allows you to play notes with velocity control (harder taps generate louder, more bold tones). Holding down a note and wobbling your finger applies vibrato, while adjusting the pressure of your finger or moving it across the width of the Chorda’s ‘neck’ also modulate the sound. Finally, tilting, moving, shaking or ‘bumping’ the Chorda activates the motion gestures, which respond differently for different sounds. All in all, it’s a really intuitive, engaging way to play and control sounds.
The Chorda works very well as a standalone instrument, but there are more options to explore if you want to connect it to a mobile device or computer. The Artiphon Connect app allows you to access additional presets, create sample instruments and edit settings, including alternative keys, tunings and scales. A separate Preset Creator app allows you to edit and program your own sounds using the Chorda’s internal synth engine. DAW templates are also available for all major music software, including GarageBand, Logic Pro, Ableton Live and FL Studio. By connecting up the Chorda as a controller for your software, you unlock the hidden secret, which is that it’s a cheap way to access one of the most exciting and expressive ways to play instruments: MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) is a relatively new protocol, but the Chorda is fully compatible. Use it to control an MPE-compatible synth like Arturia Pigments and you’ll find that it’s hugely inspiring, using those gestures and motion controls to modulate sounds in the synth software.
The MPE functionality reflects the biggest strength of the Chorda as an instrument in its own right: no matter whether you’re using built-in preset synth sounds or treating it as a controller for other sound sources, the playability of the Chorda is superb. It’s a device which makes you want to pick it up and get creative. It’s a measure of the Chorda’s versatility that it’s just as appealing to pick it up and mess around with it while watching TV as it is to treat it like a serious studio controller or live performance instrument.
We loved the fun, accessible approach of the Orba, but the Chorda feels a lot more like a ‘real’ instrument. That’s a tricky word in this context, because you can make great music with nothing more than an Orba, but the fretboard-style approach of the Chorda undoubtedly makes it feel more like a guitar or a stringed instrument. Whether you treat it as a fun little toy for jamming and coming up with ideas, or take it much more seriously, the Chorda feels like a bit of a bargain.
Greg Scarth
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