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Comment by Aardwolf | Hacker News Reader

It says no musical experience needed, but is a whole bunch of chords to switch between really easier than the same amount of plain piano keys in a predictable order?

Cool instrument though and selecting a single chord, then playing around with the sensitive pad does seem easy

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I think so. For instance, you can get “fake books” that are charts of chord progressions of hundreds of songs. Someone could sit down with this and a fake book and imitate a lot of songs well enough for a sing-along evening. It would take an awful lot more piano practice to go from zero to that level of playing.

That’s setting aside the quality question. A good pianist in the right setting’s going to sound way better than a newbie with an Omnichord. However, the newb and their Omnichord would probably be a lot more fun at a house party than not having live music at all.

And a good pianist could have fun playing with a newb on an omnichord.

For sixty bucks you got yourself a "toy" keyboard which will let you play those chords with just pressing the root note. When you're ready to move on and play the full chords yourself, you already know which roots to play.

It would seem so. Piano keys play a single note. It takes three or more notes to make a chord.

It’s probably like a harmonica. You won’t sound that bad with it because it prohibits you from playing off key, but a good harmonica player knows what they’re doing.

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