Ableton Link is an amazing technology developed by Ableton, that lets musicians play music together, staying in sync and using the a WIFI network. The power of this technology is that, when integrated inside a musical application it becames seamless: the musician only has to activate the external sync. It’s became widely diffused in a short period of time in such a way to be considered quite a standard nowadays, especially for what concerns the various apps programmed for the iOS environment to make music.

Let’s take a brief look at how it works, considering all the possible scenarios, standard ons and “non standard” ones, eheheh.

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After our first discussion about programming a synth lead on the Novation’s baby, the Mininova, in this brand new appointment we’ll try to program a punchy synth bass taking advantage of the powerful and efficient synthesis engine of this machine.

Programming a synth bass is generally a quite straightforward process because the rules to follow are not too many, but I think one good rule to follow is “simple but with a lot of possibilities under the hood”. What does it mean? Well, it means that the timbre should be built using few sound sources but many modulation sources in order to let the musician variate the timbre “on the run” and give his execution much more character and fun. 

In other words, a synth bass is quite different from an acoustic bass or electric bass so don’t try to hide the fact that it’s produced from a synthesis engine but use this last one to produce something that would not be possible instead. Obviously, don’t forget the kind of timbre you need for the music you’re playing/composing/recording so…always search for the right compromise.

So let’s start with our programming: DAW opened, Mininova AU editor loaded and we’re ready to go!

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