parallels // LinnStrument + Melbourne Instrument Nina

video upload by the audio dump

"Some quick technical notes since I wasn't feeling the live annotation on this one. If you notice “SWITCH 1” lighting up intermittently on the left side of the instrument, that’s showing when I’m using the sustain pedal. The switch is assignable, so that isn’t necessarily what it means in every LinnStrument setup, but for me it’ll generally be sustain unless otherwise noted.

For those unaware of the Linnstrument, it was created by Roger Linn and has 8 independent rows of notes. By default these are tuned in fourths but mine is tuned (low to high) EAEADGCF. The red lights are a custom setup and do not indicate any specific notes or scales like the stock setup; I made them to resemble the fretboard markers on a guitar. The white lights show what is being played as well as all other locations on the grid where those same pitches occur. You can customize these lights however you want to. I really can't say enough good things about the Linnstrument, so if you have any questions let me know.

The Nina is being restricted to 8 voices despite it being a 12 voice synth. This is to allow a longer release while letting the voice allocation keep things from getting too muddy. The patch is intentionally simple and you can read the details from the front panel. One thing I really like about the Nina is that the oscillator waveforms are not just on/off, so this patch is based around a morph between a triangle and a saw. All effects are internal and from the Nina.

The Nina is being controlled in MPE mode - there is not a lot of in your face MPE gestures here like extreme independent slides, but per note vibrato and occasional slides for phrasing have become practically essential to me now. I really hope more synths add MPE support over time because at least personally it is very much a "once you try it you don't want to go back" sort of thing for performance. Another important feature of MPE is being able to play unison intervals, since the exact same pitch can occur on multiple channels at once (which you can hear here a number of times).

This music came together very quickly, though I had some other ideas that didn't fit here, so most likely this will be the first in a series of 'parallels'."