The small setup of today! Some nice synths for some sound-design experiments ;)

So, today I decided to get some good synth time and try out some new ideas with some of my synths!

In order to be a bit more productive, I decided to focus on few machines and so I ended up picking  the 3 different machines in the photos!



In such a small setup, a really good all-around machine was a must, but rather than picking up the Clavia Nord Modular G2, I decided going for their original Modular, the Clavia Nord Modular G1!

I chose it mainly because it is much more compact than any of my two Clavia Nord Modular G2Xs, and I can always use it as a keyboard controller for other gear (which I wouldn't be able to do with my Clavia Nord Modular G2 Engine).

I posted a review of the Clavia Nord Modular G2 few days ago, and despite the Clavia Nord Modular G1 has some drawbacks when compared with its older brother, it is still a really amazing machine for sound-design!

Without wanting to go too much in detail about those drawbacks, I'll just tell you that on the Clavia Nord Modular G1 you can control much less parameters of your patch in realtime (18 knobs available but you can't change their function with a page button), you can't send MIDI (so you can't use it to sequencer other gear, or as a MIDI controller to program other synths), you have much shorter delay times (there is a single delay module with up to 2.65ms of delay), and you don't have any busses to send signals from one slot to the another (you can only send sounds from the poly area to the effects area).


To fix the lack of proper delays, I decided to bring my old Roland DC-20.

As Roland labelled it, it is an Analog Echo, and unfortunately there is no modulation available, but it sounds really nice!

It is a pretty good delay if you want to add a very nice ambience to a track when the repeat rate is at the minimum, or to add some metallicity to your sound when the repeat rate is quite high (which can sound really nice on drum sounds)!



And to complete the setup, I decided to add my Creamware Pro 12, which is basically an emulation of the classic SCI Prophet 5!

I haven't had the chance to compare it with the original, but it sounds really good on its own and is very easy to edit as they copied the original interface (which means some enhancements over the original SCI Prophet 5 design are not editable on the front panel)!

I am not sure how much sound design I'll be doing on it today, as usually I end up focusing on the Clavia Nord Modulars, but it will still be pretty nice to have it around to just experiment a bit with the presets and use it to test some effects processor patches I'll be making on the Clavia Nord Modular G1 (despite you can't use long delays, it can still be a very useful effects processor)!

I also have to take care of this little guy today, but fortunately it seems he is enjoying the sounds I'm producing so far! ;)

Since he seems to be pretty relaxed at the moment, I'm confident I'll be able to get something nice done to show you all later, so be sure to keep checking my blog! ;)