Nord Stage 2/2EX Programs for Beatles songs

[Spider]

Strawberry Fields Forever.
Another tricky one, with two sections of the song using totally different sounds, which I always found quite difficult to blend well in the mix with other live instruments, possibly because it was post-produced so much on tape that the final sounds bear little resemblance to real instruments (and of course the famous "flutes" were not real flutes but Mellotron tapes, etc etc etc ).
Anyway, I ended up with two versions of this song. The first one tries to do everything with a single program, using a great sample I found on this forum, "Strawberry Orchestra", with strings, trumpets and sitar all together in different parts of the keybed.



For whatever reason, I was never fully satisfied with this version. Either the intro and first verse sounded great, but not the second part, or vice versa. I struggled for months with equalization and never found the perfect solution. And so...see next post.

[Spider]

Another version of Strawberry Fields. I found I could tailor the sounds much better using two separate programs, one for the intro-1st chorus-verse and the other for the rest of the song, with the trumpets and the sitar breaks. I put them one after the other on the set list, and learned to be quick in switching programs mid-song. Of course the NS2 doesn't have seamless transitions, so sound will be cut for a split second when doing the switch. I found that in live performance this was basically unnoticeable by the band (and even less by the audience), but it remained the one situation where I longed for the seamless transitions of the E6/NS3!

[Spider]

Tomorrow Never Knows.
The Beatles song that changed everything for me. When I first listened to it I was simply shocked. Was I listening to Radiohead or Aphex Twin? To Chemical Brothers or Brian Eno? How could that thing possibly be from nineteen-SIXTY-SIX ?!? Since then, whenever somebody says Beatles only did silly outdated pop songs, I make them listen to this and make them guess who's the author and when it was recorded. By the time they recover their jaw from the ground, they've usually changed their mind about the Fab Four



As for the program, I used the arpeggiator and Hold function together with a lot of delay to recreate the sitar drone. Press C3 to start the song and don't touch it again, and don't play any other sitar note, to aoid messing things up. Just remember to turn off the arpeggiator at the end of the song to stop the drone.
The other split zones contain the violin and organ sounds. The reversed guitar solos was played by our guitarist, so I didn't recreate it.

[Spider]

We can work it out.
A simple accordion patch.

[Spider]

While my Guitar Gently Weeps.
A simple split with piano and the high piercing organ sound, which I aproximated with a Farfisa with heavy EQ.

[Spider]

Yellow Submarine.
Piano of the right, horns in the center, and noises/fx on the left split. Play the keys between Ab1 and Eb2 to aproximate the engines and mechanical noises of the middle break.

[Spider]

Yesterday.
Another simple two-part split with cello on the left and orchestra on the right, to cover the various interweaving string parts of this classic.

[Spider]

Well, that's more or less all from me. Hope others can have fun with these programs, and please feel free to expand the thread with other Fab Four songs you may have in your repertoire!

[Spider]

Wow, this is indeed a great contibution to this forum, @spider!

Thank you so much!

[Spider]

That's really cool @Spider, thanks a lot!!