Nord User Forum

I'm playing my recently acquired NS2 for piano/celeste parts with a symphony orchestra on Sunday. I've got weighted keys because I play a lot of classical as well as pop lit. We're playing Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite and the glissando badness in the fifth movement is tearing up my fingers much worse than a piano. I've been using my thumb and middle finger as if holding a guitar pick. I tried using my palm instead but it's not as clean and difficult to change directions 4-5 times each gliss. Hoping not to bleed all over my keys on Sunday...any tips or suggestions?

For those interested...gliss lightening/thunder starts about 3 minutes in.

Thumb down, fingers up. If you lock your thumb, you might tear your nail out by the root if it gets stuck between two keys. This is bad, as you will get blood all over your nice keyboard.

To glissando up, use your first two fingers. As before, do NOT brace them with your thumb.

Even with the right technique, glissing is not easy on these weighted keyboards, they're just too spongy. Same goes for mordents, trills, acciaccaturas and such. It's not so bad for organ sounds, as you can use the heel of your palm for glissing and smearing, but for classical music, you'll just struggle with some things. Sorry, no advice to give, just saying it's not you

I'm using a Nord Stage 88 (the first version) and I also feel that it's hard to do good, powerful sounding piano glissandos on it, the reason being that the keys need to be pushed down remarkably deep to make a sound - glissandi sound weak as a result. Seems to be a peculiarity of the Fatar TP-40 action used, because I can feel the same on a Kurzweil PC3K8 that uses the same action. I've got used to it, but it still feels different than a real piano.
However it doesn't bother me during normal playing and the Nord piano sounds are just fabulous! Also organ glissandi are not a problem when set to the "high" triggering point.

I'm going to try sanding and filing the edges of the keys and see if that helps. I'll start with the front corner lip which seems to do the most damage.

unspecial wrote:I'm going to try sanding and filing the edges of the keys

I bought a Graphite 49 keyboard to supplement my Stage HA88 to overcome this problem. They cost very little and work extremely well.

Try changing the key trigger to the high option (like one would do for organ). I've done organ glissandos on the NS2 HA88 without too much difficulty. I believe it's because the trigger height was set high thereby allowing the notes to sound without fully depressing them (i.e., you can just skim the top of the notes when setup like this).

I did some glissandos on the NS2 HA88 at the end of the solo in this video and no blood. Although these are palm smears in the video I've also done thumb and finger glissandos but I as I said in my previous post the key trigger height is set high. I think this is the key to more easily playing glissandos on a weighted NS2.

unspecial wrote:I'm going to try sanding and filing the edges of the keys and see if that helps. I'll start with the front corner lip which seems to do the most damage.

Oh dear...