Melbourne Instruments’ NINA SESSIONS are a chance for us to show off our Nina Synthesizer, and also an opportunity for us to showcase some of Melbourne’s incredible musical talent. For our first Nina Session, we are excited to present local Melbourne duo, CLOSE COUNTERS performing original tunes from their latest album, ‘SOULACOASTA II’.

We asked Close Counters to choose some of their songs that they thought would be interesting to play on Nina. It was their idea to use two Ninas, and create a live improvised rendition of their song 'BREAK FROM IT' using only Ninas, their Nord Stage keys and a TR-8S drum machine. The above video is entirely live with no overdubs or additional effects. There has been minimal mastering and post production to the final mix, giving you a very true indication of Nina's sound and sonic palette.

For this performance, the duo use a number or factory and custom presets to shape the sounds, and both Finn and Allan are using different multitimbral keyboard splits throughout the song. You’ll see some heavy manipulation of the filter as you watch closely, along with a lot of ’morphing using Nina’s A/B morph feature. Nina’s morph allows you to move between two predetermined patches, smoothly blending every parameter of the two patches, including all modulation and effects. Morph allows performers and sound designers to virtually adjust just about everything with only one knob, making it possible to do what otherwise would take many hands, and even many keyboards.

Full video is available to view now.