Novation Mininova programming part 1 – a synth lead

Mininova is a powerful mini synth-vocoder made by Novation whose popularity has rapidly grown between musicians, due to it’s extremely versatile character, to its very good sound quality, to the goodness of the materials used to build it and, last, but not least, to its very affordable price.

Furthermore one of the most exciting features of this “small monster” is the very efficient vocoding system it offers…let’s say it, definitely an icing on the cake for the “Novation baby”.

Mininova

Having choosen one of these toys as a part of my own setup and having appreciated it’s power in addiction to the easiness of programming it, I would like to show you how to build sounds using its synthesis engine.

And to do this, I would like to use the Mininova VST/AU editor that, instead of using the buttons and the encoders embedded on the synth, lets the programmer use the mouse and his computer supplying to him a software interface that shows the whole set of parameters in a more affordable way.

Continue reading

Live jamming with Ableton Live! – first steps

Live! is a digital audio workstation (DAW) made by Ableton that changed the life of a lot of musicians with its unique workflow. Compared to other softwares as Logic, Cubase, Sonar, Audition or whatever you use, Live! offers to its users, in addition to the classic workflow,  the capability to organize the song as a “sequence of scenes”.

FIGURA2

In this article I would like to discuss with you about this technique and give you a series of “tips and tricks” to start live jamming with your equipment and this beautiful piece of software. Since there are a lot of things to say and a lot to take a look at, let’s proceed step by step.

Continue reading