Today synth maker Novation announced three new goodies that celebrate the company’s heritage: a short film, a free sample pack, and a synth giveaway contest.
Movie: First, they’ve just today debuted a short film (above) that explores Novation’s heritage. (Well worth watching, if only to glimpse synth designer Chris Huggett’s workshop).
Sample Pack: Next, the company has also announced a free sample pack comprising over 800MB of loops, single hits, multi-sampled patches, and drum kits from its classic and “modern classic” synths.
Synth Giveaway:
Finally, Novation are offering three people the chance to win their choice of Bass Station II, UltraNova, or MiniNova in a make-a-track competition. The contest is to be judged by an all-star panel including Paul Hartnoll (Orbital), Liam Howe (Lana Del Ray, Sneaker Pimps), Eats Everything, and Timo Maas.
The contest runs for one month, from today (4 February) to March 4, 2014.
The heritage movie, the free sample pack, and contest entry information are all available on the Novation website.
Nice, I’ll try to get a bass station ^_^
That pumps me up to go play on my BS2!
Novation seems to have lost their way for a few years in the early 2000s but they’re back with some awesome synths now, especially the new BS2.
Bass Station 2 is really the best of the new analogs. Everything is very well laid out, it sounds great and the ability to actually SAVE PATCHES is absolutely essential if you play live!
At the 10 minute mark: blatant lie!
THEY did NOT invent the matrix of buttons. Monome was first. Novation made it cheap.
Not sure where you think they are saying they invented the matrix of buttons – they just say that they created the LaunchPad.
The LaunchPad is much more tailored to Ableton Live than the monome, because of both its built-in software support and scene buttons, etc. And it followed the APC40.
LIES!!!!
Great Video chaps. For me the Ultranova was something really special. I think now is the right moment to bring out a 61 key pro synth again. Time to give the Swedish chaps a run for their money!
I’ve got a minty one of those little ‘Gnat’ synths glimpsed in the film, a
fantastic little machine; got it hooked up to a kenton pro2.
You almost never see them for sale, a shame, and even fewer seem to
have survived in wasp-like casings.
I had a BassStation rack and I lost the cap. I emailed Novation years after the product was discontinued and they sent me the pot and the cap for free. Never had such positive dealings with any company ever before or since. So thanks Novation.
Yeah cool people, I had problems with a k station and remember and they helped me getting it back to work, nothing big but still.
But I never used a midi controller as crap as the nocturn, those encoder grrrrr!! Can’t have it all right?
I agree the Nocturn drove me nuts!! There¨s a reason it wasn¨t mentioned in the video.
I’ll try to win a BSII. The BSII is completely amazing with 2 oscillators, noise, overdrive, distortion, acid filter, patch memory, sequencer. And on top of that the keyboard has aftertouch and feels great to the touch. If they ever make it into a polyphonic keyboard, they will own the market.
… they have to give us Automap AAX !
What an irony!
I love Novation synths.
I just saw this movie, got very inspired and turned to my Novation Supernova II Rack to enjoy THAT sound one more time and … poof! For the first time, my (previously working) Supernova II decided to die! Probably it expected more coverage of itself in Novation’s video …
Launchpad is the music world’s invention of the mouse. What Xerox PARC did for computers, Novation did for music. Live sampled music, but I suppose a lot of people call that music. So, in a sense, keyboard people are PCs, Launchpad people are Macs. I’m a keyboard person.
Still love my X-Station. Such bang for the buck with the audio interface, synth and excellent midi controller all in one.
I know I’m so disappointed that this synth got sorta passed-over in it’s time. I still use mine all the time. It requires a bit of menu-diving to get to the more advanced areas of the synth engine, but that’s never stopped the MS2K from being a classic synth.
The effects section is admittedly weak (especially the reverb), and the pre-amps on the interface aren’t great, but both are workable. LOVE the filter overdrive on it as well. AAAAnd that you can pitchbend each oscillator seperately… mmmm…. gonna go make a patch that bends into a diminished chord right now.
Sorry, brain meant Micron but fingers typed MS2k.
There is simply nothing on the market today like the XStation. The ultimate controller for programming synths, with controls laid out like a one for one analogue synth. The Ultranova and SL series with its single row of knobs just isnt there. The Bassstation is lacking a controller mode, to decouple the controls and synth engine.
The XStation also had its handy fx section, permanently on an aux send from my studio mixer. If there was an XStation 2 with improved build quality, id buy it right away.
This contest really inspired me, because it was more than just a remix contest, and the sounds in the sample pack are great, and there is so many ! I dont own any novation synthesizer, but now i want one ! So wish me luck…. Here you can hear the result : https://soundcloud.com/nakedapemusic/chaque-homme-dans-sa-nuit-sen
This is great.. I already submitted mine, good luck to all of you
https://soundcloud.com/m-chop/novation-competition-2014-2