Image: Artiphon
Nashville-based tech company Artifon has a new music-making gadget up for backing on Kickstarter called Orba. The Orba is a small, handheld device that’s a synth, looper, and controller all in one. It’s shaped like a halved grapefruit, and mimics the gestures used on smartphones and trackpads to let you make beats and play around with sounds with a variety of motions.
The flat top of the Orba is divided into eight segments that let you stack drum, bass, chord, and lead layers, along with operate basic controls like record and pause. Then, the center acts as a menu button for cycling between features like presets and the looping function.
There is a lot packed into this tiny device, which takes it far beyond just tapping a button and…