I haven’t given my Arturia Spark as much love as I thought I would when I first picked it up, which is a bit frustrating since it sounds and ‘plays’ incredibly well. The main reason is that I always saw it as primarily a ‘live’ instrument rather than a sequencer / midi tool, and I just haven’t spent as much time as I’d like playing and recording live sets.

For this reason I’ve had a hard time integrating it into my current workflow, which is very much centered around NI’s Maschine with other synths running mostly as emulations on top of the Maschine software sequencer.

This about to change though since I’ve made a commitment to explore the ‘live’ path further. Currently I’m experimenting with recording the Spark as an audio input (as opposed to recording the MIDI it outputs). And at the same time layering other analog inputs on top of it. This means that after I hit record in the DAW, I have no interaction with the computer (not even looking at the screen) until the ‘set’ is done and I hit stop.

This is a super exciting feeling since it takes me much closer to a ‘performance’ kind of setting where there is no retake or after-the-fact editing of parameters. I’ve also recognized that it makes it much easier to feel truly immersed in the music.

At the moment I’m only learning the ins and outs of the Spark and some other instruments I have hooked up so I’m not really ready to share anything yet (except for the short ‘sample’ below).

I also have a super secret sauce coming in from Las Vegas tomorrow that will surely spice this up a lot, but more on that in another post.

Anyways, I’m really excited about spending more time with the Spark, it’s just such an incredibly creative and intuitive instrument to work with.