Dino Soldo is a multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter. He plays numerous instruments live for huge stars such as Lionel Richie, Leonard Cohen and Beyoncé, and has various self-penned albums. On stage, a wide assortment of instruments encircles him. Saxophones, wind instruments and harmonica, guitars, keyboards, percussion items, and in his own words, “some damn strange controllers”.
Dino also uses Novation Nocturn Keyboards with Automap acting as the data hub for his entire rig. He tells us why he chose the Nocturn, and how Novation products have improved his stage setup.
“Because I have a vast array of instruments waiting to be picked up ‘cold’, I have one unilateral demand of my gear: It must work right on the first note and work as expected. I came to Novation first by way of their excellent-feeling keyboards. Most keys in the market have terrible feel, either by emulating weighted pianos or avoiding the topic altogether by putting maximum spring in their boards. Novation is the perfect balance; doing what no other company does in its class by providing an excellent feel to every model of keyboard they have.
What kept me coming back to Novation was the adaptability to any live or studio rig demand I have. Try routing a breath control signal from a controller to a plug-in setting in three steps on any other rig. Novation’s Automap does these tasks with ease. Now, no matter what kind of weird electronic gear is in my hands, I always know that Novation has my back when it comes to getting a consistent performance.
“The real-time output of my wind controllers and Eigenharp have brought quite a few headaches when it comes to routing and mapping MIDI CC information and splits. With the help of Automap and the new Ultranova, sound design in real time has once again become a reality for me. Now my hands can tweak till my brain explodes, or hopefully my client’s brain explodes! Ultranova’s editor/librarian lets me know how things are going and where I can find all of my sounds easily, and I don’t have to take my mouth, hands or feet away from making music. It’s been quite a trip to use the vocoding tools for tweaking my harmonica sound. I keep giving Ultranova my dumb ideas and, like an alchemist, it keeps turning those ideas into gold!
“It’s just so easy and fast now to get those little voices out of my head! Novation have not only raised the bar, they changed the dang rules!”