I’m really excited about the roadmap for Arturia’s Origin. I’ve had this beast in the studio for a few months and absolutely love it. This thing is deep, wide, powerful, sounds great, is easy to use and extremely gratifying to play. I’m not alone in my assessment – there are a slew of reviews in trade magazines that echo my sentiments. This is the first hardware synthesizer I’ve owned in more than 10 years, after I thought I’d *never* own another hardware synth.

Arturia started with a long list of bold plans for the Origin, including templates of all of their software plugin recreations of classic synthesizers. Because they were delayed in the release of the instrument – and likewise, the intial release didn’t initially deliver on all of Arturia’s ambitions, I think the reception for the Origin has been somewhat chilly in certain circles. (The list price of the machine has also raised a few eyebrows) And of course I believe that the negative chatter has been undeserved – and amounts to little more than a vitriolic combination of F.U.D, commercial disparagement and just plain old sour grapes.

Be that as it may, there are some really interesting things planned for the Origin mid-year. I’m particularly excited about using the Origin as a generic MIDI controller, not only to use it in a sequencing environment to control the Origin’s synth engine and edit/play back with the simplicity of a VSTi plugin – but also for the prospect of being able to map those knobs and controls to other synth plugins in my setup. Also, there are some modules planned that don’t have any correlation to one of Arrturia vaunted plugins – the Hammond module and Leslie effect are two prime examples.

Aside from the Origin being greater than the sum of its parts today, these new developments are particularly exciting. In most cases I use a freeware Hammond Organ plugin and Steinberg’s internal Leslie simulator for any organ part that’s required in a cue I compose. However, this is going to be a particularly interesting addition to the kit, not only to check out Arturia’s take on these classic tones – but also to see how they work in a larger modular synthesis environment – to mix and match these modules with the others lying under the Origin’s “hood”. This is going to be an interesting summer for new music and tunes from Titan Line Audio.