Changing the character
Because you've got opinions.
Chords' character lives in two places: the controls at the bottom of the main window, and a group of rows in Settings → Instruments → Chords.
In the main window
| Control | What it sets |
|---|---|
| String sustain | How long the strings ring on their own. The first half is a fine range up to double; past it the slider climbs a ladder of longer and longer rings, ending at ∞, where nothing fades until the trigger ends it |
| Energy bias | Positive holds the low strings longer, negative the high ones |
| Dynamics | How much your touch counts for. Positive makes every pluck speak, negative opens the range up. See Strumming |
| Shake response | How much a shake feeds the ringing strings. At zero, motion does nothing - see Shake and tilt |
Settings -> Instruments -> Chords
| Row | What it sets |
|---|---|
| Voicing | How the chord is spread across the strings. Wide is essentially a mutant barre chord that spreads the notes up the keyboard as the stretch trigger is pulled. Close changes the algorithm to keep the note choices closer together, acting a little bit like a keyboard player's hands. Neither is "better" than the other, they just have different use-cases. |
| Stretch ceiling | The highest note the stretch may climb to. Bring this down if stretching the chord is causing your patch to go out of the |
| Octave tilt | Whether rolling the pad onto its ear shifts the whole instrument an octave. Off by default |
| Tilt engage | How far you have to roll before it shifts |
Reset
Reset Chords to defaults takes two clicks. The first arms it and the second does it. It leaves your key alone.
Two related settings live elsewhere. Every main-window control also answers a fixed MIDI CC sent to MIDIpad in, listed on the Automation pane - see App settings. And how Energy and Agitation are sent is set in Settings → MIDI - see MIDI and MPE.