Nord User Forum

thanks guys.. to be honest, i mostly listen to it and wince.. also because i'm like +6 in the mix compared to the rest, i'll have to see if i can get time to tweak the multitrack original.. there are flubs abounding, i'm happy i fooled at least 2 of you.. ;)

bdodds wrote:thanks guys.. to be honest, i mostly listen to it and wince.. also because i'm like +6 in the mix compared to the rest, i'll have to see if i can get time to tweak the multitrack original.. there are flubs abounding, i'm happy i fooled at least 2 of you.. ;)

Yeah, I hear you. ;p
Every musician is his own worst critic.
The imperfections make it live and fun, mess it up 3 times in a row and it becomes jazz.

Which synth did you use for the Fly intro? your Voyager?

So i used to use the Voyager, that's what I used on this one:

• Fly like an Eagle

the keyboard is just long enough to get the run in.. i run the Voyager through my M9 for the delay, and to get the higher runs I crank the oscillators up a step each time.. I think it sounds pretty close to the original.. This time I set up a patch for Fly on the Stage 2, one panel has the synth through the on-board delay, one panel is organ, so I can do the synth then switch over.. with the longer keybed I just need to do the last two runs an octave up from the last, instead of oscillator trickery.. At the last run up I crank the feedback all the way so that it repeats forever - i just need to remember to switch back to that panel and pull the feedback back down at some point before switching patches to avoid an abrupt ending.. I had intended to use the Voyager like I usually do, but as it turns out I didn't have my M9 set up right and we went to go into the song and I figured, hey, good a time as any to try out the new Stage patch, huh?

I just ventured a guess. It just somehow sounded too good to be the NS2 synth, but I was wrong.
I've heard it said that the NS2 is a real kit changer. You've made excellent use of it!

Has anyone ever said that the vocalist has a Seal like character to his voice?

Thinking about my studio when I was making the Piano Bass samples, I thought I'd share my band's EP from a few years ago that we cut at my place:

• Are You Lonely

1. Are You Lonely - The synth solo is my old Stage Classic - Clav is my old Electro

• Will is Gone

2. Will is Gone - I'm particularly proud of the Hammond tone in the bridge, nice and gritty.

• Hard on You

3. Hard on You - straight ahead rocker featuring the A-100

• The Boulevard

4. The Boulevard - Featuring my '75 Mark 1 Stage in the bridge

Unfortunately all of the Hammond and Rhodes are real, not Nord. Sorry.

bdodds wrote:....

Unfortunately all of the Hammond and Rhodes are real, not Nord. Sorry.

Apologizing for using the real instruments, is a little like Chuck Norris apologizing for NOT using a stunt double
Excellent music!

A few subtractions, and one addition:

That is a cool setup!! Have you recorded any things with the NS2 on synth duties??

Also how do you like the Little Phatty compared to the Voyager?

The Voyager is a phenomenal synth, but it's not as immediate a live synth as the LP. The layout of the LP is so amazing - the knobs are immediate and easy to tweak. I don't know how familiar you are with the design, but each section gets a knob, LFO, VCO, VCF and VCA in that order. Each parameter has a button associated with it, so in the VCA section for example there are ADSR buttons for overall VCA and for filter VCA, 8 total. If you want to adjust one of those parameters, hit the button and the value appears around the pot. They're actually pots, not continuous encoders, so it does some fancy things when you grab the knob. You can have it snap to the pot position, you can have the pot need to rotate through the old value and it'll pick it up as you pass, or you can do what I like, and that's scale the travel of the value linearly w/r/t the distance left on the pot, so if the pot is at 12 o'clock and your value is at 3 o-clock, it will scale the clockwise change down by 1/2-ish so that the whole travel from 12 to 5:30 or whatever will move the value from 3 to 5:30 linearly. This can be weird when your knob is at 8 and the value is at 4 and you turn it clockwise, but you get used to it, and it's easy to just grab the knob and make a change by altering your knob feel rather than wasting time trying to 'catch' the value or the jarring snap of the normal pot function.. AND, in the mod section you'll notice familiar nord-style 4 and 6 function rectangular buttons. This thing is like a cross between a Nord and a Moog, and it's got a great sound.. Exactly what you need when you have a synth mind and you're running it live and you know what you want and what knobs to grab to do it. The Voyager is great if you want to route mod sources and destinations all over creation and come up with fantastic sounds for exactly what you want, the LP is great if you want a lead synth that screams and can be tweaked on the fly very intuitively..

One cool thing they did with the LP is to include an overload function - on the Voyager I route the headphone out to the audio-in and enable the audio-in in the mixer section and that way you can overdrive the filters and get great distorted tones, but it requires a patch cable, two knobs and a lot of balancing. On the LP they have an Overload button in the VCF section, just hit that, crank the knob, good to go.. Another awesome feature is an output on/off button, which allows you to make adjustments without having it leave the synth, so for example, I've got some songs where I gliss from the lowest to the highest octave with the highest portamento setting, and when I want to reset it to the low value I hit the off button, hit the low note, then turn it back on, and it's ready.. Also, it's got an auto-tune function which is fantastically clever, basically including a crystal that produces a tone of known frequency and occasionally, when you haven't been playing for a little while, it'll turn off the audio, compare that tone to the oscillators, adjust the tuning, then re-enable the audio.. clever! Anyhow, I just got it and am loving it. Haven't done any recording with the NS2 synth yet, but I use it live a bunch, it's definitely capable, but I'd characterize the sound as soft, whereas the Moogs are warm, but edgy..

bdodds wrote:Haven't done any recording with the NS2 synth yet, but I use it live a bunch, it's definitely capable, but I'd characterize the sound as soft, whereas the Moogs are warm, but edgy..

Personally, I think that the NS2 synth is kind of harsher pseudo-analogish, while the NS classic is really soft. I actually have problems coming up with patches that do not use samples and that sound smooth, like a generic smooth saw pad. I have played some VAs from the lower end and I find them soft compared to the NS.

Yet I agree that when I play my Mopho or try out a Moog, those are definitely warmer, with more edge.