Novation Summit - Generative ambient & FM synthesis

video upload by No Lake

"One thing that I haven't tried with this synth yet is a good old meditative generative ambient (for those who aren't familiar with the concept, it's a piece of music created itself from an initial set of musical elements and by specific rules defined by the composer and his machine).

So, I created three self-generating patches that play simultaneously at 40BPM and several sequences with modulation frequencies. The three LFOs are now playing ping-pong with each other. Of course, everything follows predefined rules to avoid a complete mess. They just "modulate together" in harmony. It's basically FM synthesis. But FM can be hazardous, eventful or even crazy. It takes time to reach something pleasant and relaxing.

The Novation Summit and the Novation Peak do have a strong FM engine and these synths can be turned into a modular synthesizer. Then I just had to add some real-time effects on everything and off we go.

It might sound easy, "you just ask the synth to play music for you", but there is a lot of preparation that goes into making it all work. It's far from easy. I mean, anybody would do it overnight otherwise. In fact, you can't just snap your fingers, it often takes more time than creating a new song from scratch. But the result is totally different as you can hear. It is therefore more of an exercise in style. Something that I've always wanted to try and I've had this synth for three years now (almost to the day).

Although, my cup of tea is more about creating melodies than planting a seed and waiting for it to germinate, hoping for the best and wrapped in some technical demo. But when it works, it can be very soothing. I almost fell asleep the first time I listened to the final result^^

It's so much fun though and I'm still a big fan of the genre. It creates something different than usual. Something fresh and unpredictable. So, for those who have 20 minutes to spare, I invite you to use headphones, close your eyes and meditate with me in the ethereal world of procedural music."

Novation Summit - Generative ambient & FM synthesis (part 02)

video upload by No Lake

"Just another try with something a bit weirder and some floating notes on the Push. I turned the comments off because I don't want to be like "buying your interest" but if you wanna share something, don't hesitate to do it on part 01 and I'll answer to you with great pleasure.

Both attemps are available for free on my Bandcamp : https://nolake.bandcamp.com/album/sum..."