In this video, Brent Kallmer of BluewaterVST takes us through the wonderful NOD-E ensemble by Antonio Blanca, an algorithmic music machine that generates MIDI note data based on the positions of nodes moving on the instrument panel.

Says Brent:

You might think of NOD-E as the sequencer that you get when the nodes in Spiral reach escape velocity and break out of orbit. In NOD-E, 8 nodes travel around an XY-field and trigger notes when they cross certain boundaries (defined by you). Movement along the X-axis triggers notes; movement along the Y-axis determines the triggered note’s velocity (in other words, a note that is triggered at a high Y-value will play more loudly than one that is triggered at a low value. The nodes are propelled throughout the XY field by two polyphonic LFOs (one for each axis).

The cool thing about NOD-E is it can sound like anything – you can route the MIDI data to other plugins, even to hardware synths – or record and edit the sequence in a sequencer. Big ups to Brent for this great video introduction to the ensemble.