HouseBud

What it does

A MIDI chord pad instrument, standalone or AUv3 MIDI, that sends chords to any synth in the host. Each pad splits into octave slices, and a harmony engine builds the chords from key, scale, voicing and degree settings you can edit down to the individual variation. Motion FX add repeat, arpeggio and strum, synced to the host or free-running.

In the demo

Jade runs three instances in AUM driving Pianoteq, SoundBox and SynthMaster, some fed by Helium. She walks the preset editor, widens the octave range to the mega setting, changes the chord count and per-degree roles, then plays the pads from a keyboard through the pad-out MIDI route.

Worth knowing

It makes no sound of its own beyond a basic built-in sampler, so pair it with a synth. The settings run far deeper than the pad grid suggests, and the manual covers the octave presets and voicings.