Minichord Wants To Help You Find Rad Chord Progressions

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If you’re good at music theory, you can probably find all the chords and progressions you need just by using your fingers and a suitable instrument. For a lot of musicians, though, remembering huge banks of chords can be difficult, and experimenting with combinations can quickly become tedious and tiring. Enter the minichord, a tiny version of the Omnichord synth designed by [Benjamin] that offers to help out by putting all the chords you need a mere button press away.

The minichord is based around the Teensy 4.0, a capable microcontroller platform if ever there was one. It’s paired with a bunch of tactile buttons which are used to tell the Teensy which chord you desire to play. Various combinations of buttons can be used to play more advanced chords, too. There are potentiometers on board as well for volume control, as well as a touch pad for “strumming” arpeggios and other fine control tasks. An online interface allows modifying the presets onboard, too.

[Benjamin] hopes to get the minichord into production; it’s currently in a Seeedstudio competition that could see that happen, based on likes on the project video. The minichord isn’t the only player in this space, of course. The Orchard synth has been making similar waves this week. We’ve seen [Benjamin’s] work before, too. Video after the break.



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