Sonicouture has released Omnichord for Kontakt and EXS24 in an effort to help people in Japan - All proceeds will go to the British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal.

The Omnichord is an electronic musical instrument introduced in 1981. It typically features a touch plate and buttons for major, minor, and diminished chords. The most basic method of playing the instrument is to press the chord buttons and swipe the touch plate with a finger or guitar pick in imitation of strumming a stringed instrument.

Soniccouture have released a sampled emulation of the Omnichord, featuring a KSP strummer script for realistic strumming, using the mod-wheel or other MIDI CC. The Omnichord they've sampled is a ‘System Two’, and it has a great synth tone, which sounds ‘cheap’ in all the right ways. You can mix two different tones, one straight, and one modulated with a basic LFO. While not sounding much like a plucked string, it does have a pure character all its own, which won it many fans, such as Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, to name but two.

Features:

• KSP Strummer - realistic playing mode.
• 2 Round Robin layers.
• 24 Bit 44.1khz Sampling.
• Sound Design Presets.

The instrument will only be available until the end of April 2011, and all sales will be donated 100% to the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal. The donation will be made in the first week of May 2011.

The price is just £5 / €5 / $5.