An Omnichord is an electronic musical instrument, introduced in 1981 and manufactured by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation. It typically features a touch plate, and buttons for major, minor, and diminished chords. The most basic method of playing the instrument is to press the chord buttons and swipe the touch plate with a finger or guitar pick in imitation of strumming a stringed instrument. The Omnichord we have sampled here is a ‘System Two’, and it has a great synth tone, which sounds ‘cheap’ in all the right ways. You can mix two different tones, one straight, and one modulated with a basic LFO. While not sounding much like a plucked string, it does have a pure character all its own, which won it many fans, such as Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, to name but two.
