As Eno said years ago, anyone can be an ambient musician just by holding down one key; now it¡¯s more than just ambient¡­ sigh.
posted by aldus_manutius at 8:34 PM on September 30 [1 favorite]

I will probably watch anything involving Matt Berry and Jemaine Clement and this is no exception
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:45 PM on September 30 [11 favorites]

I just spent the day trying to figure out what I could sell so that I could buy this when it becomes available again on the 10th. Looks soo fun. Like an update of the omnichord.
posted by umb¨² at 8:47 PM on September 30 [2 favorites]

Well, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing someone might use to make music in the year 2000.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:02 PM on September 30 [3 favorites]

As Eno said years ago, anyone can be an ambient musician just by holding down one key; now it¡¯s more than just ambient¡­ sigh

It's a synthesizer. Like people have been using for decades. Music has managed to muddle on.
posted by Sebmojo at 9:23 PM on September 30 [9 favorites]

As a few members of the Talking Heads have once said, Eno can get bent. This does look like a lot of fun.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:29 PM on September 30 [6 favorites]

I¡¯ve used one - it¡¯s a cool idea and really well done
posted by awfurby at 12:29 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

I have friends who are very into synthesisers. Five minutes into this I honestly could not tell if it was a real product or a parodic musical equivalent of the Turbo-Encabulator. (It is in fact real.)
posted by Major Clanger at 12:56 AM on October 1 [9 favorites]

Looks very fun, and an amazing design.
posted by chaz at 1:02 AM on October 1

This is actually far more entertaining than a commercial for Tame Impala's chord machine ought to be. And I think, per TheWhiteSkull above, that everyone involved has definitely seen Look Around You - and the Music in the Year 2000 episode in particular (machadeynu, machadeynuuu... )
posted by prismatic7 at 3:19 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

That's the best promo video I've ever seen. I want one, bad, and I don't even play keyboards.
posted by signal at 4:49 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

DoctorFedora: "I will probably watch anything involving Matt Berry and Jemain Clement and this is no exception"

Usually same, but Berry has really tarnished his crown by agreeing to make money for the TERF Lich Queen herself. Highly disappointing and I¡¯m still not sure what to do with that information. It just sucks.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:49 AM on October 1 [16 favorites]

TCHD, same. I am really bummed about that too.
posted by Kitteh at 5:21 AM on October 1 [3 favorites]

i have a q-chord i bought at the tail end of their availability. it came with no manual or power cord. i literally pulled it off the wall and said "sell me this."

there are a lot more functions in the device than the buttons expose; there's a raft of setup flags you can trip to unlock a whole bunch of voices and other features.

it's a neat machine, and the form factor is fun.

it's too bad i have musicial performance anxiety because it's really quite ideal for just banging out the tunes
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:16 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

I have been noodling in isolation for the last decade and thought this was just a dead-on spoof.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:36 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]

As Eno said years ago, anyone can be an ambient musician just by holding down one key; now it¡¯s more than just ambient¡­ sigh.

I use a similar chord-making device, and it has taught me a lot.

I'm not musical like, at all. I've taken lessons in the past, and am just not geared that way- zero actual talent, but I like playing with music like kids like playing in a sandbox. (like, we call it play yeah? You can kinda suck at your hobbies- its okay).

But tools like this can also be teaching tools if set up correctly. The web interface for the hichord displays each chord and how to play it on a piano, or guitar. Coming up with little sketches and 'happy accidents' lets me take those ideas and use them on other devices. I have a really hard time intuiting or coming up with those types of ideas in complete isolation.

Yeah, i guess if scaffolding different types of musical learning are a bummer, so be it. But, for those of us who didn't have music education growing up, and don't have a natural bent for it, but still like to make pretty noises, eh, I'm okay with those types of technological solutions?

Can we get Berry and Clement to just do all instructional videos ever?
posted by furnace.heart at 7:42 AM on October 1 [4 favorites]

At least it's still $550 for now. The famous OP-1 that started the playful 60~70's retro design fad launched at $800 but after it went viral the price jumped 75%.
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:08 AM on October 1 [3 favorites]

I'm so glad to see this posted here, because it popped up on my YT front page last night and I half-worried I'd dreamed it.
posted by TangoCharlie at 10:23 AM on October 1

Whenever I see something like this, I always wonder if they could make it into an iPad app?
posted by ovvl at 10:29 AM on October 1

Yes, it's technically possible, but there's no way it would be as profitable for them, or as fun to use to make music or users, as task-specific, bespoke, tactile hardware.

I don't have the energy to go into why fairly priced, technically complex, self-contained iOS apps are almost impossible to market.

Also, there's already an iPad app that does a lot of this. It's called Garage Band, and it's free. Almost any of the built-in instrument performance screens have a "smart chord" option that lets you fuck around with real-time performance at about the Q-Chord level. It's not very fun to play live, because there's no tactile feedback, and no amount of clever coding is going to give an iPad real buttons.

One could probably plug a midi controller into the iPad and craft something like this, but then you've got two devices and maybe a cable, and a it's not task-specific and feels clunky.

Anyway, I guess I had a little energy.

There was a period of time when the iPad and iPhone were first released where loads of really cool, smart & inventive music making apps were launched, and some people made a few bucks, but everyone realized that poking at a glass screen when you can't even feel whether your fingers are in the right place so you had to look at it all the time was ... pretty shitty UX for a musical instrument.

Im stop typing now
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:18 AM on October 1 [4 favorites]

Agreed, there are some great iPad music apps (Borderlands!) but people have largely gone back to wanting physical interaction. See all of the lovely new midi controllers on the market, etc etc.
posted by q*ben at 12:01 PM on October 1

Whenever I see something like this, I always wonder if they could make it into an iPad app?

100%. There's an incredible app that is a perfect copy of the synthi, an ancient analog synth (it's the sound in pink floyd's 'on the run'.) ipad/iphone has very good sound hardware (android has always been terrible, unfortunately) and there's dozens of excellent synth apps like sunrizer, nanostudio, hell even garage band is pretty great. there's nothing in this that would be challenging to port.

that said, knobs and keys are just a lot more fun to make music with.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:06 PM on October 1 [2 favorites]

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