Suzuki Q Chord

My boss, bless him, recently piped up in a conversation we were having in the office the other day about musical instruments and told us he'd got this really great thing that was so cool and was enourmous fun. He then said what it was.

A Suzuki Q Chord !

Now, I've seen these on eBay and just thought, no. These are wrong. These are a modern day equivalent of the old Bontempi organs we had as kids...



It's a natural progression of the crappy preset ridden Casio and Yamaha keyboards of the 80's but instead of having a keyboard, it has a strum plate.

Anyway, he got wind of the sampling work I do and asked if I might be interested having a loan of this thing. Well, I didn't like to say no, seeing as he's my boss !!

Anyway, he brought it in today. As I walked in the office, one of my colleagues was having a play with it and I just went in to full on "fake enthusiasm" mode !

I have since gotten it home and had a play myself and I have to say it's the most god awful thing I have ever come across.

36 buttons on the "fretboard" represent 12 keys with 3 choices of scale for each (Major, Minor & 7th). The central buttons look after Rhythm patterns (you have your typical Bossa Nova, Country, Rock, Waltz, March, etc), Chord modes (Auto, Manual, Melody & Bass) and the Strumplate voices which include Guitar, Piano, Strings, Harp, Synth, Vibes, Flute, Organ, Voice & Sound FX, none of which actually sound anything like what they claim to be.

You can add things called Q Cards which contain pre-recorded songs, so you can play-along-a-Willie-Nelson !!

To play, it's fairly simple. Select your chords and strum away. The Q Chord ensures that the notes that appear when you strum are in tune with the currently playing chord.

Surprisingly, it has MIDI in & out, allowing you to play the on board sounds from an external keyboard and also allowing you to substitute the Q Chord voices for those of a better tone generator ! Sadly (?!?!) you can only have it connected via either MIDI in or MIDI out at any one time, never both !

I have only had a short play, but it has only reinforced my opinion that instruments that contain their own speakers are invariably shite !! LOL ;o)

I guess as an educational tool, however, it might be of some benefit :o)