Clavia Nord Electro2 Gets Its Imitation-Ivories Tickled
You'll have trouble finding fatter sounds than the many the Nord Electro2 provides without lugging several tons of vintage tonewheel organs and rotary speakers around with you. William Holland Overdrive shows you how, with the flick of a supple supple wrist, even Tommy the blind pinballer could switch between any number of classic "mechanical piano" sounds.
WORD TO THE WISE: Bill explores the spectacular on-board effects on the Nord Electro2 in this video, some of which can get pretty intense / harsh. Keep a hand on your volume control.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. You are looking at the Nord Electro 2 73 virtual electromechanial keyboard. Now, what this does is it emulates classic electromechanical keyboards. What does that mean? Well, it emulates organs like the Hammond, the pianos like the electric piano Wurlitzer, clavichord, electric grand, electric acoustic grand, and electric piano 2 similar to like a Rhodes sound.
Now, if I take these down check this out. One of the most badass features here are the independent drawbars.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
It breathes in and out like normal drawbars.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Again, bring them back in. Now I can actually go over here if I want to change the octave.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Change the octave at will. I can go through my banks which there are banks A through F with eight individual patches and these controls also double with the shift key as a MIDI channel control, lower channel local tuning control, transpose, memory lock, pedal pole, and configuration control. You can also store everything right here with user store, so it’s a very user friendly keyboard. If I hit here...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...see I have a clavichord selected. And they have a bunch of preset ones that you can use.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Now, you can actually go in and program these yourself as well so let’s take a look at these real quick. I’m going to turn off all of my external effects just to give you an idea of what these sound like clean.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
It’s your electric piano.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
If I go over here, I have an electric grand.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
We have an acoustic grand next.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
We also have the second electric piano.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
All right. And moving on, I’ll show you some of the effects and other things that come with this. You’ll notice the organ here is one of the more complicated setups compared to the clavichords, Wurlitzers, etc.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
You’ll notice these also come kind of pre-loaded with their own sound effects.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
So, you’ll see like the rotary speaker for example. You can use that with the organ.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Turn that fast, tell it to stop...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...try to turn it off.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
I can also set the vibrato. There are six different vibratos.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
I can also split up the upper and lower. You’ll notice my drawbars change depending on what part I’m on here...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...just like I’m on the lower here, so my lower drawbars. I can go to the upper...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...and change those up...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...where I can hit split, and I have presence control with the actual pianos. I’ll get to that in a second. However, with the organ, there’s a wide variety of effects you can take advantage of, and this also includes the pianos as well. You’ll notice I have basic overdrive for doing some Deep Purple type tones.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
You can turn that rotary speaker on and off. You can also EQ it.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Now real quick, let’s take a look at some of the effects we have. We have...
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...your basic tremolo...
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...with the rate and amount control...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...pan.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Oh, hello. Turn that down a little bit. Wah wah.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Wah wah number two.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
And wah wah number one I believe can be controlled with a foot pedal.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Moving back to my clav, You’ll see I have auto wah turned on.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Moving back to our effects, we have our flangers, phasers, choruses.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Let’s turn the flanger on...
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...and go crazy with it.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Bring it back down.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
You can switch it up to your chorus.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Chorus number two, phaser.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
And phaser number two.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
Again, overdrive can be used with these effects to produce interesting combinations...
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
...or the rotor.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
If you want to make the phaser less pronounced, you can pull out the amount knob.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
And again, all these can be EQed.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING ON THE NORD ELECTRO 2]
I always loved the Nord
I always loved the Nord Electros. Looks like there are a lot of options with this one. Thanks for the review!
no problem!
I'm glad you got something out of the review. This keyboard is amazing. The draw bar functionality is probably the coolest thing on here. This keyboard definitely follows the Nord tradition of building awesome synths.
Learn to play!
This guy really sucks... hardly shows off the incredible sound and versatility of the instrument, and doesn't even know the names of the instruments.
Rhodes, Wurlitzer EP, Clavinet D6, Yamaha Electric Grand, Grand Piano, Hammond B3 organ with leslie 122 speaker.
You Suck!
Learn tempo too, is it really that hard to play a series of 8th notes?
well...
actually, I was slowing the tempo down gradually as I played. Also, please note that I was straddling a tripod while doing this. This is more about how the keyboard works and sounds. I'm not trying to show off, and it's been a while since I've played organ or clav-based music. Used to play jazz, and for the last few years I've been playing in an electronic/rock band so it's a completely different style of playing. Plus, I don't really have a beat going here. Again, this video is not about my playing...it's about the product and how it sounds. There are plenty videos on youtube of people playing Deep Purple riffs on keyboards. This is about the product, it's sound, and it's functionality: Not whether or not I can play the solo from "Highway Star" properly.
Flamers aside, I would have
Flamers aside, I would have like to hear more of the pure Rhodes, Wurly, Clav, etc. without effects. This video shows how you can mangle your sound with effects but doesn't show how enough would be used in real life. It doesn't give us a chance to hear how well the Nord emulates the real instruments. More chords, riffs, etc. up and down the keyboard at various velocities without FX. Thanks
thanks!
Electrob
See, I'm a fan of music that used these instruments for pure sonic madness, so I do have to excuse myself for that one. I'll stay away from the space rock next time and bring it down to earth. Thanks for the guidance, as these videos are really for people trying to buy the product. Your feedback is great.
-Bill
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