Meet the Minichord, a Tiny Omnichord With a Big Beautiful Sound
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Minichord is an open-source instrument inspired by the Suzuki Omnichord – and could become available for purchase with your help.
Meet the Minichord
Everybody loves the Omnichord. The autoharp instrument from Suzuki has inspired many musicians, including most famously Gorillaz. The recent OM-108 is great fun but at close to $800 it’s not for everyone.
Enter Minichord. An open-source project from developer Benjamin Polive, this fun-looking instrument is a tiny DIY Omnichord-style chord player. And yes, it even has a sensing bar.
Pocket-Sized
The Minichord is “a pocket-sized instrument designed to build interesting chord progressions,” in the words of the developer. On the left are buttons for playing chords, either single triads. For more complicated shapes, press multiple buttons. On the right is the sensing bar for strumming and playing individual notes. There’s no drum machine, unfortunately.
Subtractive Synth Engine
It may not look like it, but the instrument boasts a full subtractive synth engine on the inside with 12 user presets. You can edit the sounds and presets by connecting it to a computer via USB and accessing an editor webpage. You can also share presets with other users.
Other functions include a user-programmable arpeggiator with tap tempo, user-programmable potentiometer for secondary functions, a seven-hour internal battery, and USB audio out.
DIY Project
This is currently a DIY project. If you’re handy with DIY projects, you can head over to the official website or Github page (links below).
For those of us who are more LSEDI (Let Someone Else Do It), Benjamin has entered the project in the Seeed Studio monthly campaign. Every month, the three most popular DIY projects become products that you can buy online. To help Minichord become a pre-assembled product, simply watch and like the YouTube video above.
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More Information
- Minichord home page
- Minichord Github page
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