Telepathic Instruments ORC-1 Orchid

The Orchid is designed to be an inspiration machine, putting complex chords at your fingertips while looking right at home on the flight deck of your retro‑futuristic spaceship.

Like most, I was introduced to the Telepathic Instruments ORC‑1 Orchid through a viral YouTube advert, which cast the inimitable Matt Berry as a comically disobedient demonstrator. Being a fan of his characters since the cult Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, this unorthodox celebrity marketing caught my eye, and I was immediately interested in where or who on Earth this synth came from.

The answer is Kevin Parker from Tame Impala. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, search for ‘The Less I Know The Better’ and you’ll say ‘oh yeah, I know this!’ Telepathic Instruments don’t shy away from the retro‑cool aesthetic, with VHS overlays, CRT screens and ironic personal styles across the web page, and there’s a whole vintage vibe around everything from the provided manuals to the device colours and so on.

The pitch is pretty simple: you can take the Orchid anywhere and use it to sketch out chord sequences, even if you know nothing about music theory. It’s a simplified device designed to pack maximum musical inspiration and experimentation in a small, portable package.

Hardware

The build quality is better than you expect it to be. It looks like it’s going to feel like an ’80s or ’90s children’s keyboard, but it feels much more dense and solid than that, part of that weight coming from the built‑in Li‑ion battery.

The style is the sort of modern‑retro that doesn’t actually look like a device from any particular period, but instead combines historic, cool styles in a hip amalgam. It falls somewhere between ’60s and ’80s retro futurism. It’s pretty and distinctive, but one down side is that the shiny surface at the front picks up dust and grease easily, so it will always be a little dirty once you start using it. Be sure to bring a cleaning cloth with you if you’re making a video with it.

The Orchid is compact at 305 x 190 x 50mm, but weighs a reassuring 1.8kg.

All keys are velocity sensitive and every stepped endless rotary encoder can be push‑clicked in order to access another function or change an option. There’s a little OLED screen too, which is bright enough to be used in indoor light, but becomes hard to see in very bright sunlight. This does matter since it’s battery powered, has speakers, and can be played anywhere, including outside. I happened to first turn it on in bright sunlight and couldn’t see the screen very well. I then searched for a screen brightness control, but there isn’t one, so you’ll have to shade it with your hand outdoors.

Being designed as a portable sketch device, the Orchid has built‑in speakers. These won’t set the world alight as they exhibit almost no bass response to speak of, but they work if you just want to fool around, which is really the purpose here. As a result I used the Orchid more often than not with the built‑in speakers switched on.

Connections

As well as the battery, the Orchid can be powered via the USB port. This is dual‑purpose, and can either be used for MIDI and computer communications, or charging. It cannot be used for both at the same time. If you’re charging or powering over USB‑C, you can still use the MIDI DIN socket for MIDI output, but you lose MIDI input.

Things are pretty simple round the back, with just a MIDI out, a USB‑C port, a 3.5mm audio output and the power button.

The Orchid doesn’t include a charger; this is ostensibly to reduce waste, as most people have a lot of them lying around. A small sticker on the back asks for a ‘10‑100W PD’ charger to be used. USB can be problematic when powering audio hardware, and some complex multi‑output chargers I tried made awful screaming and whining sounds while plugged in. Most were fine, though. External batteries tended to work, but one PD‑capable battery also made horrible noises. This is par for the course really, and I’ve had many such issues over time with USB power sources and audio gear. For what it’s worth, a simple non‑PD 5V 2A charger also worked well. The synth has auto‑power‑off settings for both 10‑ and 30‑minutes of inactivity, so be sure to set this to ‘NEVER’ if you’re playing a gig or using it in anger, just in case.

The MIDI output, whether you use DIN or USB, can output up to three channels at once. Channel 1 outputs standard playing, channel 2 outputs the bass notes, and channel 3 outputs chords. Completing the I/O is a 3.5mm TRS output jack socket, acting as a switchable headphone amp and line out. I’d prefer a more robust quarter‑inch output jack, as adapting such to 3.5mm is trivial if needed, but it does the job.

3 Core Synth Engines

The Orchid has three core synth engines — Virtual Analogue, Reed Piano and FM — and comes loaded with 70 preset sounds, and an undisclosed but presumably similar number of user banks for saving edited sounds. The ‘Sound’ knob allows you to scroll through the list. You can adjust these patches on the device to some degree, and re‑save the altered versions to the user banks. In order to do any in‑depth editing of patches though, you’ll need to use the Pistil software (see box). This acts as both a plug‑in or standalone instrument, as well a way to edit and create patches for use on the Orchid.

The quality of presets is high and it’s clear that design has been approached from the perspective of someone seeking inspiration and ideas, which is exactly what the Orchid needs. There are all kinds of organs, pads and lead synths here, with many making good use of the 19 arpeggiation and pattern modes (and their further settings and adjustments) to get you going. Oddly, the volume of patches can vary to a large degree, so you will have to do some jumping about on the volume knob unless this is updated later.

The bass sounds are fewer in number, but that’s not really a problem. There are 12 bass sounds to pick from, from smooth tones to fuzzy bass to my eternal favourite, a fifth organ. These can be set to play underneath the chords automatically, or you can manually play the bass line.

Playing

The basic method of play is to press one of the top row of chord buttons with your left hand and press a key with your right. This results in the corresponding chord being played. The lower row of chord buttons are for various extensions: 6, m7, M7 and 9. You can hold as many of these as you like at the same time as well as one from the top row and make all kinds of combined chords. If you set the view mode in option to ‘Geek Out’ you can see everything about the chord, the name, all the notes and even a diagram of an octave of a keyboard showing which keys are pressed.

The voicing knobs front and just off‑centre allow you to move the chord and bass voicing up and down the keyboard, changing the lowest note and other notes used for the chord. Pressing this knob swaps single‑note playing between standard octave and split octaves, allowing you to play outside of a single octave when improvising a melody. A similar, smaller knob allows you to move the bass notes around too. Chord voicing is particularly useful when you aren’t happy with the note selections for a particular chord arpeggio; often playing with this knob helps you find a more musically satisfying choice.

An even easier mode is found by pressing in the Key knob, and rotating it to select a key. In this mode you can simply press keyboard keys and the Orchid will select chords that work in that key, allowing you to quickly create sequences that would be hard to come up with if you lack the music‑theory knowledge. In this mode you can still press the chord modifying keys, or even the chord keys themselves, should you want to play around with different additions and unorthodox progressions. All of these play styles can be piped into other instruments using the MID outputs, so you can feasibly use the Orchid as a unique controller in a fully‑equipped studio setting too.

The Perform knob is one you’ll spend a lot of time playing with, as clicking it on allows you to use and tweak various arpeggiations, strums and other ways of separating the notes of your chord over time. This is bound to help with inspiration and new track ideas.

The looper is pretty limited, but allows you to use a basic built‑in beat and to track down up to 16 bars to get going with. Bear in mind you can’t actually solo over this using a different main sound, as changing the main patch changes the solo and chord sound, but you can scroll the main chord voicing up or down and solo in a different octave to write a melody part. Or use the bass to solo mode and send it up an octave or three. You can store 10 loops and return to them later, which is useful for ideas you’re still playing with, but complex looping involving a lot of layering, different sounds or song structure and so on is best done using other attached devices or a DAW.

Conclusion

The Orchid does what it does very well, opening up the world of complex chord sequences, extensions and inversions to people who wouldn’t ordinarily know how to use them. Key mode is particularly freeing, allowing all kinds of sequences to be conjured up easily. Many times while fooling about haphazardly I had an ‘oh yeah’ moment, and scribbled down the chord sequence or sent the MIDI into the DAW to carry on working with it.

Since it’s an idea sketchpad, it’s a shame looping and capturing ideas internally is quite lightweight. In a sequel I’d love to see built‑in recording. I know this could trigger upset from purists, but I simply mean a bigger screen, perhaps touch‑enabled, that allows basic multitrack recording and arranging, so you can write the whole bones of a song on the Orchid. Not too much, but just enough to get further into a song without the need for other devices.

For jobbing studio producers it’s a bit of a no‑brainer, a fun conversation‑piece device that anyone can play with in order to come up with new ideas. An uninspired client may enjoy picking out chord ideas in order to drum up some fresh session excitement, and that positive atmosphere is so important in a creative context that the device could pay for itself. For a hobbyist, the suitability depends both on pocket depth and familiarity with music theory.

If you’re someone who doesn’t really know much about music theory, the Orchid is quite unique in its ability to enthral and educate easily, allowing surprising chord sequences to be plucked from nowhere just by playing with a few buttons.

If you’re someone who doesn’t really know much about music theory, the Orchid is quite unique in its ability to enthral and educate easily, allowing surprising chord sequences to be plucked from nowhere just by playing with a few buttons. This removal of the barrier to complex composition is a great feeling, stripping some intimidation from getting started with a new track. It joins the ranks of fun devices that bring some joy back to music creation by letting you, literally speaking, get as far away from a computer as possible.