This video captures an improvisation, by Rasmus Nyåker at the Copenhagen Noise Lab, on an alternative midi-controller.

“All sounds you here is straight out of a Nord Modular G2, straight into the camera,” notes Nyåker. “No audio-editing whatsoever.”

Technical details below.

The G2 is using 2 slots:

The first for collecting and sorting out the data from the controller and making the synthesizer sounds.
The second running some gate sequencers as well as making the drumsounds.

So a bit deeper information about the first slot. The data from the controller (position and pressure) is sent as 24 discrete CC-messages. These are going into separate “Sample and Hold”-modules that are clocked by midi on slightly different time-divisions.
The synthesizer patch is actually 2 simple monosynths, controlled by each sides 6 control-strips on the midi-controller.

The first strip from the left on each side is controlling pitch (quantized in C-minor) by position and waveshape (from sinus to ramp) by pressure.

The second strip controls amount of tracked FM from the opposing synth’s oscillator on the oscillator by position and cut-off frequency of a 24dB LowPass-filter by pressure.

The third strip controls amount of Osc-FM on the filter by position and amount of filter resonance by pressure.

The fourth strip controls a WaveWraping waveshaper by position and how much of it that will be mixed with the preWaveWrapped signal by pressure.

The fifth strip controls amount of LFO-modulation of the oscillator-pitch by position. (Same LFO for both synths). And the pressure controls whether or not the Oscillator will sync with the LFO.

The last strip controls final amplitude of the synth by position and varies the reverb sound by pressure.

This was mainly an exercise in how you can make very expressive patches by simple means with an alternative way of control.