Novation last week released a new set of tutorials for their Circuit. These cover scales, melodies, and chords. Those are interesting not just for those with limited skills on other instruments, but also, ironically, as a way to get away from your usual habits if you are used to something like a piano.
The tutorials are great, but this raises a question. Which tutorials would you most want to see – what topics, and what hardware?
There’s of course way more gear out there than you could ever reasonably cover. But while some material applies to everything (music theory, for instance, or the principles of mixing), some technique really is specific to particular hardware.
Reader stats on the articles we’ve had on Circuit tell me that you agree with us – this is a sort of “people’s drum machine,” thanks to its simplicity, low cost, and a steady stream of updates. (For the latter, firmware updates I imagine will soon hit the limits of the hardware, though users should continue to make interesting sounds and so on.)
Now, Novation are lagging a bit – documentation is only just complete on the Novation Circuit Mono Station, which is by some measures more complex than the original Circuit. (At least that’s true considering what’s available on the hardware itself, before you get into Circuit’s editor.)
We could do some research / survey on this, of course, but prior to that I’m curious to open this up to discussion.
Oh, and let us know how you’re working with the Circuit, as I know a lot of you are making fairly heavy use of it.
Back to the human side of this, it’s worth revisiting this film CDM co-produced with Novation. Shawn, I want to hear what you’re up to these days with the Circuit (and everything else).
I love Shawn’s idea of “a lot of Jedis.” That’s why it’s actually exciting that more people are developing chops – and a reason to do good tutorials and share knowledge. A golden age of Jedis would be great for music. No one would ever say, “I wish there weren’t so many Jedis – it’d be better if there were fewer.”