This is The Orchid, a new instrument from a new company, Telepathic Instruments, set up by Kevin Parker, the musician, producer and brains behind Tame Impala. The Orchid is a chord generator, a specialist piece of songwriting kit that has been in development for many years, dovetailing Parker’s love of technology and melody with a bespoke and unique design.
The Orchid has been shaped by Telepathic Instruments’ co-founder Ignacio Germade, following an idea that Parker had over a decade ago to harness a chord generator with a powerful synth engine (the instrument actually contains three synths) as well as a looper and onboard effects. There’s also onboard stereo speakers and an octave’s worth of velocity sensitive keys.
Starting with the root note, The Orchid allows you scroll through different chord voices, re-pitching and re-positioning them across an entire keyboard. The performance modes - Strum, Slop, Arpeggiator, Pattern and Harp – add rhythm and texture and you can build out your chord progressions using the Loop Mode. Reverb, chorus and delay add another dimension to the three onboard synths.
These have been created by German developer Stefan Stenzel and include an FM synth and an analogue synth, replete with all the filters and oscillators you’ll ever need, plus a vintage reed piano emulation. Parker and Germade, who co-founded the company alongside Chris Adams, Charl Laubscher, and Tom Cosm, will make 1,000 examples of The Orchid available in December 2024, encouraging users to form a community platform that’ll develop the instrument still further.
‘Orchid isn’t just about how much you know or don’t know—it’s about shaking up your creative process,’ says Laubscher. ‘It’s a tool for anyone who wants to step outside their musical comfort zone, to experiment and to find what’s on their mind.’ For Kevin Parker, the device is the culmination of an idea he first had a decade ago.
The Orchid, $549, TelepathicInstruments.com, @Telepathic.Instruments
