Black Eyed Peas – secrets on stage
Black Eyed Peas Musical Director Printz Board takes us on a secret tour of his keyboard lair onstage during BEP’s 2010 E.N.D. Tour. He discusses keyboard setup (including a Novation, Moog, Roland Juno-G, and Yamaha Motif), mixer, stereo monitors, bass amp, trumpet, and all of the extra bells and whistles. He’s got a talk-back mic to communicate to Eric Harris during the show, the monitor engineers, or the whole crew in their in-ears. He also has a little TV screen that shows him any angle of the stage, and he can alert whomever necessary about potential problems, so that each cue happens at the right time and the show goes smoothly from song to song.
J.M.Jarre – Equinoxe Part 6 – live cover by Yarosystems
Always nice to see the Nova in action
A simple live cover of Jean Michel Jarre Equinoxe Part 6. All the sounds from the Novation Nova synthesizer.
Novation Launchpad x 2
A Progtronica exercise in DJ’ing from the drum stool using Ableton Live as the engine, A novation Launchpad, Roland V-Drums for the live drums, and various iPhone sound apps for many of the sonic textures. All sounds produced from scratch by Progtronica producer, digital DJ, and Drummer Nigel Sifantus. Visit nigelsifantus.com for more information, Ableton tutorials, videos, and a free preview of the debut Progtronica Ep “Live For No One” on No Service Required Records.
As part of the Alpha-ville International Festival of Digital Arts, Music and Culture, workshop series, organisers equipped their East London facility with a suite of Novation Launchpads and Ableton Live.
Guest speakers included Subeena, an Ableton Live artist.
Using the Launchpad on stage and in the studio
Mike Slott talks Launchpad
Brooklyn-based Mike Slott speaks about using Novation’s Launchpad and Ableton Live on stage and in the studio. Club footage filmed at the LuckyMe NYC Showcase 2010. Interview footage filmed next to the BQE!
UltraNova is here
Novation is now shipping the UltraNova, a ‘Nova’ series analogue-modelling synthesizer with a powerful effects processor.
It is a single-part synth taking the legendary Supernova II synth engine as a starting point and packing it with the latest technology. It now has brand new features including wavetable synthesis, even more powerful filters, a software editor and a revolutionary new touch-sense performance mode.
The ‘Nova’ family was born in 1998 with the Supernova, which was the first of a series of powerful synthesisers. These quickly became industry standard ‘big-synths’ which are still used by countless artists and sound designers.
UltraNova is the latest addition to the family bringing the range right up to date with a host of new features and a more affordable price tag.
UltraNova features
- Brand new Nova-series synth engine based on Supernova II:
- Single part with up to 18 voices, 14 filter types, 36 wavetables, 5 effect slots.
- Patch Browse enables you to browse 300 sounds by type & genre.
- Touch-sense controls enable totally new sound-shaping & performance:
- Trigger envelopes/LFOs/filters/FX by just touching the encoders.
- Large rotary control instantly allows you fine control of any parameter.
- Totally gig-able with 37 full sized keys, a vocoder, and loads of controls:
- Voice optimized 12 band vocoder with gooseneck mic.
- High quality key bed with aftertouch for expressive playing styles.
- Software plug-in editor and Patch Librarian for full visual editing:
- Plug-in editor allows you to view and edit in with software.
- Software Patch Librarian a organise, store and share unlimited patches.
- Built-in 2 in 4 out USB audio interface and it can be bus powered:
- UltraNova can be used to stream audio to and from a host computer.
- Stereo main (analogue & SPDIF) and aux outputs, and MIDI in/out/thru ports.
The Novation UltraNova is now shipping for £499.99 GPB / $699.99 USD. A specially designed UltraNova case is also now available.
More information: Novation / UltraNova
Duplex Controllerism Explained
Here is a short demonstration on how to use your Novation Launchpad with Renoise 2.6, with a tool called Duplex.
You can learn more about Renoise at http://www.renoise.com
New in this release of Renoise:
- Lua scripting. Customize the app using an elegant, clean, friendly language.
- OSC, MIDI support. Integrated control with Duplex (MIDI/OSC), native Open Sound Control support.
- Extensive hardware support. Maybe you don’t want to write a line of code, ever. You can let someone else do it for you, and reap the rewards. Already, Renoise has native, fully-integrated support for the AlphaTrack, BCF-2000, BCR-2000, KONTROL49, FaderPort, microKONTROL, nanoKONTROL, Launchpad, Remote SL-MKII, Nocturn, Monome, Ohm64, iPad via TouchOSC… all thanks to community support for the new scripting engine.
- Sample autoseek. Absolutely essential to making audio behave in the way it does in linear arrangement tools, the sample will play back from the position in the timeline, rather than from the beginning each time you hit play. (Seems obvious, but it’s part of making Renoise bridge tracker-style apps and more conventional, linear ones.)
- Better performance, compatibility. Tweaked performance on Linux and Mac, expanded file format compatibility, plus 64-bit Linux, DSSI Linux support. Renoise is a reason to run Linux, and Linux a reason to run Renoise, if you hadn’t guessed that yet. No, seriously, you’ll enjoy it.
Using two grid controllers with Renoise, arranging patterns on the fly.
Special thanks to daxton for writing the step sequencer 
Sequencing with the Novation Drumstation
dyLAB0303 has treated us with a couple of nice demos using Novation Drumstation
Using the live clips follow actions each clip goes to the next clip at each 16th.
This is based on the Tom Cosm video where he demonstrated something similiar,
The midi out from each clip is routed to the novation drum station drum rack I have set up and then audio comes in from the drum rack.
I have only set up a few step length permutations , with a launch pad or similar you could set up 7 launch permutations and stop for each channel and have a wicked little beatbox app
I extended my follow action sequencer into a series of different length slots, starting off with the 4 then 2 then 1 for the 4/4 style clips, then added 3, 5 and 6 as well as 8 steps.
These sequences can be triggered to experiment with interesting poly rythms using ableton and any drum rack. In this instance I’m sending the midi to my novation drum station.
Add something like a novation launchpad to start the different length clips and you have yourself a world of fun.
Novation Drumstation sequenced with Sonar
The Novation drum station in full action, check it out
bassdrum is on output 1 and in a different input on my emu1616 so i have some distortion on it. further no effects where used. sounds are from 909 and 808. thanks for listening
APC20 vs Launchpad
The DSP project has released yet another nice demo featuring the APC20 and the Novation Launchpad
In response to the popular Novation Launchpad Akai have released the APC20 weighing in at the same price point but with faders clearly the APC20 is going to have the advantage right?
Remember kids this is your last chance to win the KJ Sawka sample pack so check out thedspproject.com/samples to enter!
The APC20 explained:
Both n4Sphere & Algorhythmik wanted to know about how I setup last weeks APC20 demo set so thats exactly what im going to do. An explanation of my fx rack, midi mappings and suggestions to improve this setup to take it further.
I forgot to mention in this video I had a HP filter on the master channel mapped to the 4th fader for the demo too.
Also note that entrys to win the KJ Sawka sample pack have been few so you still a good chance to win it, check out thedspproject.com/samples for details.
Nice sounding demo of the alphaPad
This is a demo of alphaPad – a free Windows step sequencer for the Novation Launchpad, created by Thibaut Labbé.
Features:
- 8 instruments working on distinct channels
- 8 patterns / instrument, 64 patterns in total
- 8 notes / pattern
- Pattern length from 8 to 32 steps
- Gate, velocity and pitch control
- 3 modes:
- Edit mode for creating patterns
- Launch mode for playing patterns (works as the session mode of Ableton Live)
- Select mode for choosing the pattern to edit
- Easy synchronization with host using midi notes
Can be downloaded for free from http://alphapadstepsequencer.blogspot…
(no MAX/MSP required)
DATAMASKIN
