Loopmasters Khords Review – Is It Worth It?
Khords is a sample-based virtual instrument plugin that uses a large bank of sounds and presets. It has an easy interface and workflow that allows you to quickly create quality sounds that are suitable for many genres.
There are 550 presets, which are well put together. Different types of sounds in this plugin include pads, stabs, keys, leads, basses, string, strum, pluck, vocal, brass, rhythmic, percussive, atmospheric, and FX sounds.
Contents
It’s quite similar in look and feel to Loopmasters’ Bass Master which was released previously.
Loopmasters are a well-known company in the area of music sampling. They also offer the cloud-based sample service Loopcloud, which includes millions of samples.
Khords
How does Khords work?
It has two layers of samples that work in tandem, the Chord layer, and the Note layer, and you have lots of different options to change the feel of these samples independently.
You can switch between sample types, based on major feel, minor feel, or root/open. If you’re feeling lucky, you can choose the randomize samples option. This picks a random sample within the chord style that you are choosing. For example, if your current patch is using a minor-feel sample, then it will switch to another minor-feel sample.
This is nice for quickly shuffling between different sounds. If you want to stay in the creative zone and try and get something and mix things up a little bit.
You can alter the samples in many different ways to shape the sound, including:
- Altering sample start time
- Timestretch and shift formant.
- Multiple different types of chord filters.
- Filter Envelope
- Filter LFO
- Volume Level
There are also multiple different effects that you can apply to the overall sound, such as voice settings, which include glide, pitch, and mod. You can also assign 4 configurable mod sliders to many different controls in the virtual instrument.
You can widen the sound with effects, including a chorus effect, and also delay and reverb.
What type of sounds can you get from Khords
Khords allows you to create sounds based on a classic chord-sampling technique. You can get a lot of different interesting sounds as we indicated at the start of the article.
There are 550 presets for you to choose from. So you have a lot of different options and you can very quickly craft together different types of sounds which can work well in many different genres of music.
One shortcoming of the Khords plugin is that you cannot import your own samples. However, the internal Bank of sounds in this is already very strong and should keep you interested!
Effects
There are chorus, delay and reverb effects available in the plugin. There are six different chorus algorithms, all the way from gentle to phasey. There are three different types of delay: stereo, cross, and ping-pong; and six different types of reverbs, from bright to dark sounding reverbs.
What are the benefits of Khords?
This plugin can make it can speed up your workflow and add a lot of depth and atmosphere into your sounds with ease. If you are looking to finish some tracks, or if you’re on a deadline to work on many tracks at the same time, then Khords is a great option for you to build up some great sounds without sacrificing on sound quality.
The plugin allows you to alter the sounds quite a lot. Of course, you trigger these using your own melodies and harmonies, so you can get many different varieties of sounds.
You can change the general character of the samples that you are working with using the shift formats and time stretch. You can transpose, the notes that you were playing and change the start times as well as many other options.
Of course, you can also apply automation to any of these in the DAW that you are choosing, for example in Ableton Live, which could allow for evolving changes of the melodies as you were playing them.
What are the cons of Khords?
Khords applies an easy and very specific workflow to allow you to get that classic chord-sampling technique. Although that can be seen as a positive, it also has its drawbacks.
If you really wanted to get down and change the individual notes of the chords, or have make many different effect changes, then these features are not available in Khords.
Also, Khords does not allow you to add your own custom chord samples to the plugin.
Verdict
I think that Khords strikes the right balance between features and simplicity. It has just enough amount of sample manipulation and effects that will keep you creative, while also restricting your workflow in what I think is a positive way.
Khords brings out a certain type of sound. It creates that classic chord-sampling. This plugin performs that very nicely without over complicating matters.
Walk formats are chords available in chords is available in only 64-bit versions for AU and VST. It should work for most DAWs on Mac and Windows. However, please keep in mind that it is not available in AAX format.
Summary
Khords is a really nice sample-based virtual instrument. If you’re looking for inspiration, if you’re in a creative block, or if you want to simply just create music more quickly, then this is a really nice option to have in your plugin toolkit.
It’s very versatile, there are lots of different types of sounds, and it is certainly one to check out!
