I Made A Chord Patch That Actually Isn't Lame

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]When you think of chord patches, you know when you like hit one note and a whole chord plays, what comes to mind?

[00:00:05]Probably something really stupid, right?

[00:00:12]But what if I told you that it could actually be really cool?

[00:00:38]So, I made this patch for the Roly Cabo and Airwave. Actually, it's part of a whole bank of patches that I made that are now in Roly Airwave Player. And it's free if you already have Roly Airwave Player. So, if you download latest update, you'll get all my new patches.

[00:00:50]Okay, so most chord patches either just play one kind of chord on each key, like major or minor or whatever, or it plays all the dietonic chords from a scale.

[00:00:59]Neither one of these things is very cool or useful. But this is a chord patch that's actually cool, obviously, cuz I made it.

[00:01:09]I named it Barry's Air Harmony because it's based on some music theory by the jazz educator Barry Harris.

[00:01:15]Specifically, a really cool thing he did with the chords of the Bbop scale. The jazz Bbop scale is a major scale with an added sharp five. And Barry Harris had a way of [music] harmonizing it where you alternate between major sixth chords and diminished seventh chords.

[00:01:29]This has long been a staple of jazz piano chord voicing. And it turns out to be perfect for chord patches and particularly cool on the Cboard.

[00:01:44]So, I've got alternating major 6th and diminished chords on every note of the Cbop scale. And any notes that aren't in that scale play a diminished chord.

[00:01:55]Okay, so why did I decide to explore this? Well, the Cboard has some limitations when it comes to chords. You can definitely do some interesting things that you can't do on a normal keyboard, like bend one note of a chord or slide notes around. But other things that you're used to doing on a normal keyboard don't really lend themselves to the Cboard. In particular, switching between complicated chords very quickly.

[00:02:15]But limitations are opportunities to do cool new things, right? And if I take some of the chord stuff that's harder on the Cboard and I make it into samples that I can trigger at the press of one key, then all of a sudden I can do a bunch of cool stuff with chords that I couldn't even do before on a normal keyboard. [music] And of course, all the air gestures do cool stuff. Raise brings in an overtone.

[00:02:43]You can use tilt to bend into chords.

[00:02:47][music] and flex bends everything up an octave.

[00:02:52][music] Now, patches like this open up some interesting doors, but they're not without their limitations. The biggest one being that you are confined to a specific key. Like in this patch, everything you play kind of has to lead back to C major, or else [music] it's just not going to make sense. But hey, it's just a cool thing I'm experimenting with. So, feel free to comment telling me that it's lame or cool or dumb or ridiculous or whatever. So, like I said, these patches are part of a soundbank that I just got done making for the Roly Airwave. So, if you go and you download the latest update of Roly Airwave player, it comes with all my patches.

[00:03:26]But, you probably want to hear all the patches rather than listen to me talk about them. So, click on this video next because that is where I just shut up and