Plinky 12 Chords is an expressive polyphonic touch synthesiser, built around exploring harmonies intuitively and improvising melodies on the fly. Designed in collaboration with mmalex, it is a member of the Plinky 12 family of instruments and puts its characteristic fragile, melancholic sound at the touch of your fingertips.
The built-in sound engine uniquely combines sample playback with wavetable synthesis, with flexibly onboard modulation, parameter editing, XY automation. With a full VCF, VCA, wavefolder, ADSR, XY pad with 2 motion recording LFOs, 5 additional modulation LFOs, accelerometer, CV input and a full 5×30 modulation matrix, the sound design possibilities are endless.
Plinky 12’s hardware is designed around swappable panels. Instead of one fixed control surface, it can become different instruments built for different kinds of musical thinking.
Features
- 8 voice polyphony, split between 6 chord and 6 melody voices
- 13 Palettes with 45 chords each, to explore, mix, match and shape your composition
- 4 polyphonic melody surfaces that dynamically adjust to match the harmonies
- Free play on the chromatic surface, guided by highlights for chord and scale notes
- Improvise with on-scale notes on the scale surface
- Arpeggiate through a palette of chords on the chordnotes surface
- Explore a whole surface of suggested harmonies on the related chords surface
- Polyphonic arp with 32 x 16 step patterns that you can edit on the fly
- Circle of fifths transposition
- Built-in sequencer with 128 steps to sequence the shape of your chords
- Individual track length, modulo, probability, pattern generator, Stolperbeats shuffle
- Plinky 12 synth engine, polytimbral with different sounds for Bass, Treble and Melody
- XY modulation for morphing between synth sounds
- FX section with Tape delay and Reverb with Shimmer
- Process sounds through the effects from the external audio in
- MIDI Routing to control external synths with Plinky 12
Technical Specifications
- Power: USB-C, 5V 500mA
- 12 x 3.5mm Jack Connectivity:
- CV Clock In, CV Reset In, CV Clock Out (selectable PPQN)
- 2x CV In (-5V to 5V)
- 2x CV Out (0-5V)
- 1x TRS MIDI In (type A/B compatible; also USB)
- 2x TRS MIDI Out (type A/B selectable; also USB)
- Second TRS MIDI Out can be set as a pair of CV Trigger outs on one stereo jack
- Stereo unbalanced Audio In and Out
- USB class compliant audio out, MIDI in/out, serial, and WebUSB
- Storage:
- 2MB firmware
- 14MB persistent sample flash (114 seconds)
- 512k RAM, 8MB PSRAM; 128k + 7.5MB free to use by panels
- SD card for presets, samples, and songs
- CPU: RP2350 microcontroller
- Interface: 16×16 RGB pressure sensitive capacitive touch pads
- Other Features: Stereo microphone, accelerometer, 4 tactile side buttons, swappable front panels
- Dimensions: 12″ x 12″ (305mm x 305mm), 12mm deep
- Construction: Steel case, fiberglass PCB front panel
