what if you created a Music Creativity Tool that output MIDI and was designed like a omnichord strum board and chord grid, a little midi instrument that makes it easy to hit arppeggiated chords? oh look another keyboard i'll never build
i often want to have a chance to just sort of noodle on some music and of course one can always pick up the guitar or a keyboard. but i do like my beeps and my boops and my artificial sound. i like that tracker experience for putting together accompaniment but tracking a melody in is still hard for me and i never remember my chords. it's always left me at a creative impasse.
what if you could just put down an amen break loop and make some ugly live breakbeats or slip sandstorm in to a folk song when people aren't expecting it?
The M8 Autochord
[insert an drawing]
that thing could be designed to take an M8 Tracker and slot that bad boy in to it, and the m8 would be able to handle the actual "rendering" of the notes to audio. it could also just be used with a DAW or anything else that speaks MIDI. it could also have a headless M8 in it and skip the cable and mount entirely......
i'd call this the "goodonya m8" but i'll probably be tarred and feathered if i do. ah what the hell, im already setting myself up to learning to play Sandstorm without warning, i'm in for it. maybe goodonya m8 will be the title of the bandcamp project collecting music ive made with this automatic chord instrument
It could end up very minimalist and lightweight, most of the interface of an omnichord would be removed, with accompaniment provided by the device reading the MIDI output, be it the M8 or a PC. it could have a decent speaker built in to provide a deeper sound than the m8 speaker, maybe, or something sadge like bluetooth out
The Omnichord
The Omnichord is an electronic musical instrument introduced in 1981 by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation. It allows users to play distinctive harp-like arpeggios produced through an electronic strum plate, simulating the experience of playing a stringed instrument. Originally conceived as an electronic Autoharp, the Omnichord found popularity due to its portability, its unique timbre, and its value as a kitsch object.
The various Omnichord models feature a touch plate that the user strums, organ-like chords, preset drum rhythms and auto-bass line functionality. A grid of buttons allow the user to select major, minor, and 7th chords to be triggered by the strum plate, chord buttons and bass-line accompaniment.
v1 design idea
it's a 3x12 roam:Ortholinear Keyboard populated by choc v2 low profiles, mx compatible stems, ideally tactile but quiet. could be v1 to match the m8 i guess or just gateron brown-ish or whatever these quieet tactile mx compatible guys are.... maybe you get to put homing keys on the good chords, though, oooh.
off one end at an angle it's got a pcb with a bunch of capacitive pads and small "frets" between them to be the strum pad
it's got a battery and a power switch and it might have a decent speaker built in.
the final case design can comfortably hold an m8 with a short midi cable between the two, and both can be controlled with the device lying in your lap
it's got a microcontroller on it that will need to do some fairly complex, perhaps modal or configurable midi output based on the key and capactive input states
various combination of maj+min+flat etc combinations play different chords and the strum arpeggiates over the octaves mapped to the pads pressed, now anyone can now ask what the chord progression you want to work with is, and just roll along with it
it could be nice in a wood case ...
draft project plan
MVP prototype
it wont be portable, sleek, or standalone but it will let me test whether its a fun instrument
take the planck or planck light and teach it to do the chord grid midi out
qmk or zmk or whatever...
you dont even need the strum board at first.
design a capactive pad pcb breakout board or maybe from adafruit
add support to that custom board fw
3d print a contraption combining them
see if the planck light has a few extra pins on the board, i felt like it might when i opened it
v1
single pcb design with the mc and components hand-solderable
steady mount for the m8
battery and usb-c power options
some rgb leds that could emit from between the pcb layers in time with the output
Some things I'd like to learn to play
Some songs alice and i can sing together, some cute stuff
some camp fire songs
https://youtube.com/watch?v=dZLfasMPOU4 shinji's mom is eva unit 1
some electric six
some flashbulb
songs from my Important Albums
some karaoke standards
cruel angels thesis
epona's song for a sunny day at the park or at an outdoor tea party
sandstorm
daft punk get lucky the song of the summer
the grimes roko basilisk song could be pretty funny
a few video game songs or gimmicks, exactly one siivagunner mashup
a lot of opportunities for soundfont swap gimmicks tbh with a midi strum pad
the fucked up thing you could do is use Spaced Repetition Study to learn the chord progressions alongside lyrics