With a simple trigger, you can turn the Orchid's chord buttons into a recordable set of drums and control drum machines over MIDI.
First, make sure you have installed the 4.0 firmware on your Orchid. Once set up, you can turn Drums on by pressing and holding the Bass Voicing Dial + pressing BPM.
Once switched on, this left-hand drumming feature gets its own dedicated on-screen user interface. For each drum hit that you play, an icon will illuminate on screen. You can play multiple drum instruments at once by pressing multiple buttons.
Once switched on, this left-hand drumming feature gets its own dedicated on-screen user interface. For each drum hit that you play, an icon will illuminate on screen. You can play multiple drum instruments at once by pressing multiple buttons.
Drum hits can be recorded into loops – you can even quantize the drums for more precise timing. Your drum hits, both in loops and when played live, are output over a dedicated Drums MIDI channel. This allows you to expand the sonic universe of your rhythms by controlling external drum machines. For details on how to configure the MIDI channel on which the Drums are transmitted, refer to our MIDI channels help article.
Once you have recorded a rhythm, you can switch Drum mode off again with the same Bass Voicing Dial + BPM dial combination and resume using the chord buttons for the usual chords, melodies, and bass lines.