Another productive month here at HS Towers.

We are in love with the Hammond Novachord here and the tones it produces. They have a certain organic 'quality' that is just not attainable with today's 'perfect' synths with their symmetrical waveforms. I have tried to emulate the sound with a variety of sources (including the recent analogue modular that was installed here recently) but can't get close - there's something warty and ragged and flawed about the 1939 Novachord that makes it more akin to an acoustic instrument than an electronic one. So I had a play with the samples from our 5-star award winning Novachord library to see if there was something interesting I could do with it.

And indeed there was. I found that by using a basic, raw Novachord waveform and exploiting Kontakt's all pass filters as resonators, I could get pretty damned close to 'the real thing'. This was very exciting - it was almost like building my own Novachord. With some fiddling and experimentation, I was coaxing a wide range of Novachord-alike sounds from the thing.

But what I enjoyed when creating and using my original Novachord library was stacking sounds up with detune, etc., to make big textures so I hit upon the idea of offering that in one GUI and I have to say that I am jolly pleased with the outcome...

Novalite comes with just the one raw Novachord waveform (sampled 'warts and all') but with four tone generators that can be layered and mixed and panned and tuned and detuned and filtered before being sent to a comprehensive chain of multi-FX that includes distortion, a cab simulator, chorus, phase shifter, rotary speaker, echo and convolved reverb.

It's quite uncanny how many quite authentic Novachord sounds can be created and then some that go far beyond what Laurens Hammond could have envisaged back in 1939.

It would be so nice to have a little drinky into the wee hours chatting with with Mr Hammond to see what he has to say about our latest twist on his phenomenally innovative Novachord. As it is, I shall have to indulge in this whisky-mac snifter on my own. Which is very satisfying.