Orin Ayo is a Guitar Arranger.
It was originally developed to turn a guitar games controller HID device into a chord based MIDI controller for an arranger keyboard, module, looper, device or application. It lets you play chords and control the arranger or looper with the buttons on a gutar games controller.
this_is_amazing_grace.mp4
This is Orin Ayo in action on a typical Sunday Morning church service.
The music is played live with a Logitech Wireless Guitar Controller. The wireless dongle is plugged into a MacAir laptop running Orin Ayo and Musiclab's Real LPC. The Boss RC 600 Loop Station is connected to the MacAir by MIDI and audio with a USB cable. It sounds like a backing track, but those chord loops (C, F, G & Am) are played live on the logitech with realtime controls to the drum machine in the RC 600.
Orinayo can be setup and accessed as follows:
- Type https://jus-be.github.io/orin-ayo/index.html directly into a Chrome or Edge browser.
- Install it as a browser extension for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge from https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/orinayo/mhnemaeacdgnkmoibfeodelijegakklp
- On Windows 10+ desktops, download orinayo.exe and run it directly from a desktop. It loads the above web page using webview2. See https://github.com/jchv/go-webview2. If you are using Windows 10+, the WebView2 runtime should already be installed. If you don't have it installed, you can download and install a copy from Microsoft's website - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/
Currently, the following devices and applications are supported and confirmed working:
- Logitech Guitar Hero Controller
- PDP Riff Master Guitar Controller (PS4/PS5)
- LiberLive C1 Guitar Controller
- Ketron Event 76/61 keyboards, Event EVM, Event-X module, SD9 Series keyboard and SD90 module
- Yamaha PSR SX-600
- Yamaha MODX and Montage
- Yamaha QY100
- Korg Micro Arranger
- Giglad (Application)
The Yamaha MODX and Montage are not really arrangers, but have arpeggios that can be triggeresd via MIDI making them suitable for Orin Ayo. The high-end Yamaha PSR arrangers can be controlled by MIDI and only PSR SX-600 has been tested. If your Yamaha PSR uses the same sysex messages like the SX-600 or QR100, it should work. The same applies for Korg. It has been tested with the Micro Arranger, but not with the high-end PA series. The new Korg I3 was promising as it has same engine as a Micro Arranger, but midi control of styles was dropped like Yamaha PSR E series arrangers (aarrgh!!).
- Boss RC 600 Loop Station
- Aeros Loop Studio
- Artiphon Instrument 1
- Artiphon Chorda (wireless bluetooth mode only)
Orin Ayo can also play the strum/pick patterns for the virtual guitars from Music Labs like RealGuitar, RealLPC, etc in joystick mode along with the arranger or looper patterns.
The five colored fret buttons generate CHORD midi notes which are send on MIDI channel 4 when the strum bar goes up or down. Twenty chord shapes are supported. There are six basic popular chords (I, IIm, IIIm, IV, V & VIm) playable with a single or two fingers and fourteen other less used chords requring two, three or even four fingers. The chord mapping in Nashville number format is fixed for now. It will become configureable in a future version.
| Chord | Green | Red | Yellow | Blue | Orange |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | X | ||||
| 2m | X | ||||
| 3m | X | X | |||
| 4 | X | ||||
| 5 | X | ||||
| 6m | X |
| Chord | Green | Red | Yellow | Blue | Orange |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1sus | X | X | |||
| 1/3 | X | X | |||
| 2 | X | X | |||
| 3b | X | X | X | ||
| 3 | X | X | X | ||
| 4min | X | X | X | X | |
| 4/5 | X | X | X | ||
| 4/6 | X | X | |||
| 5sus | X | X | |||
| 5min | X | X | |||
| 5/7 | X | X | |||
| 5b | X | X | X | ||
| 6 | X | X | X | ||
| 7b | X | X |
Please note that the RC-600 Loop Station and Aeros Loop Studio have only six audio tracks. They can only play the basic six chords. However, when played together with the virtual guitars from Music Labs (RealGuitar, RealLPC, etc) in joystick mode as heard in the demo song above, the virtual guitars can handle the advanced mode chords and fill in the missing gaps. Arrangers do not have ths limitation but do not sound as realistic as a looper with the exception of the Ketron Event series which can play audio tracks in their styles.
The button on the Directonal (logo) knob used with the five colored buttons determines how the arranger style starts and stops.
Pressing the button alone toggles start and stop playing the current selected musical style in the arranger.
Pressing the button as well as a colored fret button starts the style as follows:
| Button | Starts | Stops |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Intro-2 | End-2 |
| Red | Intro-3 | End-3 |
| Yellow | Intro-1 | End-1 |
| Blue | - | - |
| Orange | Fade In | Fade Out |
The Star-Power button and the START button are used to control the style variations.
When the Star-Power button is pressed on its own, it will cycles the style variations A-->B-->C-->D-->A. When a colored fret key is also pressed, then it will play a fill for the current playing variation. The START button cycles back down from A<--B<--C<--D<--A.
Moving the Directonal (logo) knob right or up steps the playing key up ( C -> C#) and moving it left or down steps the playing key down (C -> B).
Please note that this does nothing with a Looper. You have to preload the Looper with the audio files matching the song key. Both the RC 600 Loop Station and Aeros Loop Studio have memories to preload as many songs in all the needed keys for the live event.
Pressing down on any of the five sections in the slider bar at the same time the strum bar is moved up or down can be used to perform other features. This includes sending Foot Switch on/off mesages to Ketron Arrangers that can be used to mute arranger parts or perform any custom feature required by the user.
| Button | Strum Up | Strum Down |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Play BREAK | Play FILL |
| Red | Ketron FS-9 | Ketron FS-8 |
| Yellow | Ketron FS-11 | Ketron FS-10 |
| Blue | Ketron FS-13 | Ketron FS-12 |
| Orange | Ketron FS-7 | Ketron FS-6 |
It recognises other non-keyboard USB MIDI controllers (like LiberLive C1, Artiphon Instrument 1 or Chorda) and enables them to be used as an arranger controller as well.
When using LiberLive C1 guitar, it uses a modified 7 chord keys mapping (7b, 6m, 5, 1, 4, 2m, 3m) different from the standard (1, 2m, 3m, 4, 5, 6m, 7m) by LiberLive. It will connect to the LiberLive C1 guitar by the Bluetooth connection used by the LiberLive mobile app. You can't use both OrinAyo and the mobile app at the same time. You can select different drum beats and guitar styles for both paddles and OrinAyo will use the tempo set by LiberLive except for web-audio styles that have fixed tempos.
With Artiphon Instrument 1 and Chorda, only the first five pads are used like a Guitar Hero controller. The strum bridge pads are used to provide control (strum, start/stop, fill, next/prev section).
It has an internal arranger engine implemented in JavaScript that can play midi style files in Yamaha SFFx, Casio AC7 or Ketron KST format. It can also play audio loops in OrinAyo format as styles.
It has an internal synth engine (based on sf2synth.js by GREE) that can play the styles using sound font (sf2) files with WebAudio.
It has internal strumable acoustic and electric guitars using WebAudioFont by Srgy Surkv. It behaves just like RealGuitar does with a guitar hero controller.
It has a pedalboard for guitar effects using pedalboard by Trys Mudford
It supports the extended ChordPro format proposed by Paul J. Drongowski. A ChordPro editor based on the chordpro-pdf-online project by Ruth Wong is provided to edit a song and add extra directives for precise timing, section changes, tempo, etc.
It uses the Java code provided by Paul J. Drongowski to generate a midi file that can be played on OrinAyo and any compatible Yamaha keyboard like the PSR-SX600
The generated midi file or extended chordpro can be loaded into OrinAyo and payed back with the current selected style. The performed song can be recorded with lyrics as a video file or without lyrics as an audio file.
The internal guitar, pedalboard, synth style engines and media recording are all experimental and require a bit more work to be used in live performances. The support for LiberLive C1 bluetooth connection requires the experimental Web Bluetooth confirm pairing support to be enabled in Chrome/Edge.
https://github.com/Jus-Be/orin-ayo/releases/download/v0.9.2/liberlive_orinayo_play.mp4