He said they only decided to produce it after seeing our success with the Bass Station. “At the launch in Frankfurt, I was talking to the owner of Clavia, which was launching the Nord Lead 1 polysynth. While it was successful, Jannaway now looks back at its concept with some regret… It was such a success that the company tried to repeat it with the Drum Station, that would emulate another couple of dance music staples, this time Roland’s TR-808 and 909 drum machines. “Seeing the Bass Station go on to become a popular instrument, and financially a success, was a hugely proud moment,” says Jannaway. The need for its acid-like sounds was so great that its success helped ensure Novation’s future. Roland ignored the belated success of the product, deciding to focus elsewhere, leaving a huge gap in the market for 303 clones, and the Bass Station – whether intended or otherwise – helped fill the gap. A bit of abuse from a few forward-thinking producers morphed its output from the polite basslines that Roland had intended it for into acid-squealing melodies that would (in more senses than one) resonate with the effects of ecstasy – a drug sweeping the UK at the time. It has gone down in music history that the Roland TB-303 accidentally and single-handedly kicked off dance music in the late 1980s. The Story Continues… While the MM10 was a success, Novation made a proper mark with the Bass Station, a product that might not have been so successful thanks to the apparent stubbornness of a Japanese music technology giant… “Paul Hartnoll using the Bass Station II alongside other monosynths with much larger footprints – it’s great seeing people get the most out of the gear.” Nick Bookman “Kraftwerk! Seeing them using SL controllers is great.” But there are also the high profile Brits, none more so than Orbital.
NOVATION MUSIC PRODUCT TIMELIME SOFTWARE
Ian Jannaway “Native Instruments: A typical German software company with massive emphasis on engineering detail and quality.”Ĭhris Huggett “The Access Virus TI, which I think is an excellent great-sounding synthesiser incorporating some very clever software design.” But ask the team what other companies’ products and artists they admire, and the answers take on a Germanic feel…
“For us, we embrace British musical culture, sense of humour and use of language,” says Matt Derbyshire. The Brits are Here (and the Germans) One of the reasons we’re celebrating Novation is because of its unique British appeal. Fortunately it went on to to sell over 30,000 units… oh and we never did finish the Quad Reverb product!” On that basis, Mark and I decided to start a company, which we called Novation, the MM10 keyboard being our first product.
NOVATION MUSIC PRODUCT TIMELIME PORTABLE
The problem with it was that it was fiddly to input pitch and timing information, so it was obvious that a neat accessory would be a simple portable battery-powered keyboard that it could slot into. “Work began on this ‘Quad Reverb Unit’ and during that time, in curiosity, I purchased a Yamaha QY10, which was a neat all-in-one 8-track sequencer with an audio engine in a little box smaller than a VHS video cassette. Home studio musicians were buying two, three or four of these units so they could run a live mix with one box doing the gated reverb delay on the snare drum, another with a long-tail reverb on the vocals and another on the piano, and so on. In 1991, a former band member, Mark Thompson, asked me if I could design a multi-reverb box, as products such as the Alesis Microverb were popular but could only process one audio signal at a time. Jannaway, meanwhile, had “built up sufficient commercial experience and decided to ‘go it alone’. With Chris’ invaluable guidance on the software concepts and a local friend in High Wycombe – Phil Perkins’ help on the hardware,I signed up for the task and about 18 months later the MS6 appeared.”Ĭheetah would score big with the MS6 and also release one of the first affordable samplers, the SX16. Jannaway recalls: “We found we had a passion for electronic musical instruments and he mentioned that a British company, Cheetah, were looking for a polyphonic analogue synth to be developed. Engineer Jannaway had by this time used his skills to come up with “a small calculator-type device that would enable musicians who couldn’t read music to hear phrases to help with their learning”, and met Huggett demoing this product at an exhibition. They did all love the resulting OSCar synthesiser, though – it became a classic and Chris became one of the UK’s eminent synthesiser designers.