Need chords? Call the Chordmonger
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Over 100 chords at your fingertips with the buttonised Chordmonger MIDI Chord Controller complete with arpeggiator and chord sequencer. It has just arrived on Kickstarter and developer Cantrell Hepner is trying to raise a modest £7,450 to get Chordmonger into production. You can pick one up from $89 so it’s very reasonably priced. Let’s have a look to see why you might want one.
Chordmonger
Simply put it’s a MIDI controller that generates chords at the touch of a button. There are 36 buttons for the instant firing of 36 chords and plenty more available via modifier keys. One rather nice key feature is the slider at the side. This controls how fast the notes play back from all at once, through various strummings and arpeggiations to very gentle playing. Like an arpeggiator you can control the direction of play.
Chordmonger · Source: Chordmonger
Chord Inversions and qualities can be controlled via the shift buttons at either end. These let you reach all the augmented, minor/major, diminished and harmonic possibilities. You can scoot up and down octaves and also enable latch so you don’t have to keep your finger on the buttons the whole time.
It also has a sequencer for chaining up chord progressions making it a useful machine of accompaniment. You can also play notes over the top using the buttons as a kind of keyboard.
The buttons are not velocity-sensitive but you can control velocity using the slider in velocity mode.
It’s a simple but effective device for the easy generation of chords which could be very useful for anyone struggling to get musical shapes out of their fingers or just wants to play.
More information
- Chordmonger Kickstarter page.
Video
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chordmonger/chordmonger-a-midi-chord-controller
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2 responses to “Need chords? Call the Chordmonger”
Might have to have a look. But can you record your own chords into it and trigger them at the push of a button? The Korg M3 workstation has the facility for saving your own chords to any of the 8 pads. Very inspirational especially when you play the pads randomly, but I’ve never yet seen any hardware product which can do that so easily – at least, none that I am aware of.
As an accordionist, I think it’s a good idea, but three rows only is hugely limiting. Plus it needs some way of orienting it vertically is a stable fashion, which is far more ergonomic for your wrist angle…