The new hardware is designed to quickly generate, sequence and develop ideas all in one unit

AlphaTheta — the parent company of Pioneer DJ — has announced a new piece of studio hardware called ChordCat. The new portable groovebox is available to buy now.

The ChordCat is designed to quickly generate, sequence and develop ideas all in one unit. As the name suggests, it focuses largely on chord progressions and features a whopping 110,000 possible combinations.

The portable groovebox also has a ChordCruiser mode that uses a custom-coded algorithm to cycle through compatible chords based on the current key. Users can listen to each chord and assign their favourites to the keyboard, which can then be triggered automatically or by the user.

There are a further 18 chord preset progressions, including the standard major and minor, but also genre-specific progressions and voicing like house and future bass. Once you’ve got your chord progression sequence running, you can then change the running direction of the four-by-four playback grid to give some variation to your sequence and trigger new ideas.

ChordCat features 145 sounds and 16 drum kits to trigger, meaning everything you need is included in the unit itself. There are three built-in effects to give your sequence some variation, including an arpeggiator, delay and a ducker which mimics the classic sidechain sound. There’s also a low-pass filter and amp envelope to further shape presets. 

There are eight tracks in the ChordCat, which means you can trigger up to eight sounds and drums simultaneously, and up to 16 unique patterns can be saved per track, with up to 128 steps per pattern. Round back, there’s a USB-C connection for MIDI and software control, which can also be done via the dedicated MIDI DIN I/O ports. A management software controls the features, settings, backups and patterns, and while ChordCat is compatible with all major DAWs, it comes with a copy of Ableton Live Lite. Power is taken care of via USB-C or six AA batteries for truly on-the-go performance. Audio is provided via master stereo TRS outputs and a 3.5mm headphone port. 

The ChordCat costs £239 and is available now. You can find out more on the AlphaTheta website.

In May, AlphaTheta launched a new official rekordbox USB stick designed specifically for DJs in collaboration with hard drive experts SanDisk. That followed the release of a new entry-level two-channel controller called the DDJ-FLX2 last year, as well as the launch of the company’s new flagship all-in-one DJ unit, the XDJ-AZ.

ChordCat AlphaTheta