Novation just announced Circuit, a standalone drum machine and synthesiser for making dance music quickly. It comes with drum sounds and synth patches for creating your tune, and a 4×8 grid of velocity-sensitive RGB pads that let you play and sequence drum and synth parts, like bass and lead sounds. You can record these sounds into Circuit’s sequencer memory slots, so you can really make an entire song using Circuit by itself.
Circuit has eight rotary knobs for tweaking parameters, and comes with a USB jack for hooking up to your laptop if you want to use it with a digital audio workstation (it comes with Ableton Live Lite). It’s also battery powered, has a line output and Midi connectivity, and comes with a built-in speaker, making it a truly portable standalone groove box and synthesiser for music making on the go or onstage performance.
As software plugins and digital audio workstations become more powerful, hardware is still a very important part of the DJ/producer equation because it gives you hands on control of the music that you’re making. What Novation has done here is distil both a keyboard synth and a drum machine into a box that you can take with you to the studio or your next gig.
Check out the promo video below.
Promo video
• The Novation Circuit is available now for US$329. Find out more at the Novation website.
What are your thoughts on this piece of kit? Does it entice you to get into music production? Let us know your thoughts below.
Joey Santos
