Chord V2

The thought of introducing polyphony into a Eurorack system certainly often comes to mind. The second thought, however, surely is how much effort this involves, because for "full polyphony" you need an oscillator, filter, VCA and one or two envelopes for EACH voice. That's a huge effort. Modules like the Qu-Bit Chord V2 allow you to get to grips with polyphonic patches and and to experiment with different stages of a para- or polyphonic system.

The Qu-Bit Chord V2 is a mixture of four oscillators with wavetable functionality and a chord and harmonization generator.

Pitch control, chords and harmonization:

The four oscillators can now be controlled completely independently. Depending on the operating mode, the CV inputs "voicing", "quality" and "lead" change their assignments.

There are four operating modes:

Chord: Normal (LED: off) / Melody (LED: blue)

Poly: Free Running (LED: green) and Unison (LED: petrol).

In chord mode the oscillators can easily be combined to (diatonic) chords and controlled with the help of the "quality" and "inversion" controls and inputs. The single outputs present the root, third and fifth.

The fourth output, "seventh", can either be assigned to add an additional chord stage (LED: off) or to play a free voice over a triad in Melody mode (LED: blue). This voice can then be played via the "lead" input.

The "triad" switch decides whether the "seventh" output is also present at the "mix" output or not. In the latter case and if you are in Melody mode, you would have an independent voice at the "seventh" output and a triad chord at the "mix" output.

There are two Poly modes: Free Running (green) and Unison (petrol).

 "Free Running" means that the oscillators are completely independent in their frequency. Each oscillator has its own V/Oct input AND controller in this operating mode. This mode is useful if you really want to work with exact tunings or slight detunings.

The "unison" mode is much easier to use. Here all oscillators are set to the same fundamental frequency, which can be controlled globally via the small and large frequency potentiometers in the upper middle of the module. The individual V/Oct inputs (“lead”, “voicing”, “quality” and “V/Oct”) control the offset of their associated oscillator in respect to the globally set frequency.

Quantisation for all oscillators and chords can be activated via the "harm" switch. The LED indicates the status: Blue stands for major, green for minor. Only in the two Poly modes there is a third option: "chromatic", which is indicated by a petrol-colored LED.

Wavetables / Timbres:

There are eight sound banks integrated in the Chord V2. These are either synthesized (generated by the processor), classic waveforms such as sine, triangle, sawtooth and various pulse waves OR wavetables ranging from organ sounds to voices (Ahh-Ohh-Uhh) to video game/chip tune sounds.

The possibility to load your own wavetables into Chord V2 via SD card slot is a fantastic option to have. Also unedited .wav files are accepted, whereby the results from this are rather experimental. It is much more comfortable to use the program WaveEdit from Synthesis Technology, whose formats are supported by the module.

While version 1 of Chord was confined to "classic" waveforms, Chord V2 has no limits there thanks to said import of wavetables. Also CV modulation of these timbres is possible via the inputs "bank" and "wave" – depending on what you feed them this will result in abrupt changes or smooth transitions. Adding to these possibilities is the linear FM-input which is suitable for slow running vibratos or metallic impressions (at audio rate).