Live performances with Nord Modulars

[mosc]

Just listened to the last few recordings.

Splendid!

[Derek Cook]

It's been a while since I posted here, but as a moment of serendipity I am listening to Oxygene 3 a lot. And this post reminded of how much I was impressed with these G2 sounds.

I haven't used the Nord G2 much of late, as in 2014 I purchased a Korg Kronos and retired my gig rack that the G2 was in, but as much as I like the Kronos, I think my AN1x and G2 still have a slightly more "organic" VA sound than the Kronos analog engines. It's touch and go and subjective, but I still think the G2 has the edge.

I now have a 3U rig containing sound module for laptop, DMX interface and extra MIDI interface, mixer and IEM transmitter, and I am thinking of getting a 4U rack instead so I can squeeze the G2 back into my live rig (and it won't add much weight!). Once I do that, I may think of doing some Jarre on local gigs, and I am so glad I am reminded of this thread!

[TeeJF]

[dSP Prod]

Here is a new live cover:



I will soon post a few extracts from the three other covers I have performed on that night: Fade to Grey, Photographic (DM) and Oxygene part 4: Unfortunately the sound quality on those tunes will be poor because I forgot to punch the "record" button on my digital recorder (and hence the only take I have is from the dreadful microphone on the digital camera).

In the coming days, I will upload the promised "Magnetic Fields" patches, together with the performances used to play The Robots.

[ian-s]

Excellent!

[blue hell]

Very nice indeed!

[dSP Prod]

Here's a new performance : Depeche Mode's Nothing To Fear, from the "Broken Frame" album. Sorry for the imperfect key playing!



With the exception of one sound (the chords at the end of the "break", which are played from the Nord Wave), everything comes out of the my two Nord Modulars (expanded G2 and G2X), and no external FX applied was applied.

The drums (except the cymbal, which is played live thanks to a sustain pedal), bass, and all sequences (with the exception of one from the intro and outro, which I play live) are played from the G2X internal sequencers.
A sequencer module of the G2X is also used through MIDI to play the "bell" sequence that is heard in the intro and outro (the sound from the bell sequence actually comes from the G2). BTW, the bell sound is based on a modification of the "Additive PG" factory preset, whereas all the other sounds were recreated from scratch.

There were two main difficulties in covering this track:

(1) A great number of different sounds are heard. As many as 10 different NM patches are used! As a consequence, I have to use program changes twice on the G2 to be able to play everything (well, almost everything, if you hear the original tune closely you will notice I have left a few minor sounds out). The program changes (more precisely, whole performance changes) were done via MIDI, so I can use switch buttons on the front
panel of the G2X (if you watch the video closely, you can see me hitting those switches at times when one of my hands is free).

(2) There are many variations of the bassline, and a few variations of the drum patterns. To deal with it, I use sound variations, and I
"manually" go from one to the other. To free the hand operations, I have resorted to a dangerous solution: use the footswitch of the G2
to move from one "step" of the song to the next: this uses chained 8-bit counters, where at each new step specific MIDI instructions
are sent to the G2 (typically, change a sound variation, switch a drum element or a sequence on or off). The upside of this solution is that you can send many different instructions with just one pedal hit, but there are two main drawbacks:

(a) To have nice transitions between the different parts of the song, you need to hit the pedal at a very precise moment
(and slightly ahead of the moment you want the transition to happen, because of the small time lag in MIDI operations and in the transitions
between two sound variations).

(b) There is a large risk of hitting the pedal unintentionally at some point of the song, and then having your song derail. Here, the issue
is the impossibility to have the 8-bit counter count backwards if needed (*that* would have been a nice addition to this module!).
Limited safeguards are possible though, and I generally include some when I play live, but there is no panacea.

[Electromagnetic Wave]

Everytime you release something new with your Nord, I listen it with passion!

[dSP Prod]