These files are designed to complement my review of the Novation XioSynth synthesizer in Electronic Musician magazine. —David Battino
The XioSynth is a combination analog modeling synthesizer, computer audio interface, and MIDI controller.
One technique I like to try on small keyboards is holding down a chord, pressing the octave-shift buttons, and then playing new notes. In this clip, recorded over the XioSynth's USB output into Ableton Live, I hold down a chord with my right hand and then alternately shift the keyboard up and down to add a melody and a bass part. The synth's rhythm comes from a sample-and-hold LFO. The drums are a GarageBand loop processed through Live's Beat Repeat effect and a Spectrasonics Stylus RMX loop processed with Stylus's Chaos Designer.
The XioSynth's X-Y pad controls filter cutoff and resonance in most patches. Here I slowly roll my finger left and right to subtly change the filter cutoff, and then make stirring motions to produce more dramatic filtering effects. Finally, I tap on the pad. Notice how the filter glides to the new tapped values instead of snapping smoothly.
Here's a patch I made to show off the XioSynth's oscillator-sync capability. I tuned Oscillator 2 up an octave, swept its pitch down with a envelope, and hard-synced it to Oscillator 1. Notice how the sound becomes ruder as I fade up the level of Oscillator 2 from zero to maximum. At the end, I turn down Oscillator 2 again. Drums are another GarageBand loop, processed in Live.
Filter Shape and Overdrive are two new features on the XioSynth. The overdrive adds a hollow, square-wave effect to the sound, whereas changing the filter shape adds buzzier harmonics. First we'll hear the overdrive and shape change applied to a highpass filter, and then to a lowpass filter. Drum loops, once again, are from GarageBand.
The X-Gator is another new XioSynth feature; it chops the sound into rhythmic bursts. First we'll hear an arpeggiated chord. Then we hear the same chord processed with the X-Gator instead. Guitars, drums, and crowd noise are GarageBand loops arranged in Live.