Pianos on Nord Wave

[jamesb]

Hey.
I'm a keys player, mostly jazz and funk. I need to get a single 'do it all' keyboard. I think I'd get bored with the synthesis possibilities on the Nord Stage. The Wave would obviously be nice for sound creation, but has it got any nice playable piano/rhodes/wurlitzer/clavinet samples? I've got a 88 note controller that I'd use to play the samples from, just wondering if those sounds are even comparable to, say, the Electro samples?
Thanks! james

[Wout Blommers]

jamesb

The best way to check this is going into a shop and listen. I don't know about the avaiilability of the wave in Singapore, so maybe you have to depend on the knowledge of users on this forum.

As I understand one can make his own samples on the wave, so it could be done...

Wout

[radiospace]

The acoustic pianos that come inside the Wave are pretty bad. I'd say that's pretty much the worst sampleset inside the machine. It might have some uses as a building block for synthetic sounds (using Frequency modulation, etc.), but as a substitute for a piano it is a very poor one. There is only one velocity layer, so the gentlest tinkle and pounding with your fists is triggering the same sample.

On the other hand I've gotten some really great electric piano sounds from the Wave; ironically my favorite EP sounds I've made so far use not one of the electric piano multisamples, but the electric piano sound stored in the wavetable. The criteria here is not really how well it emulates a real electric piano, but just whether or not it is musical and pleasing, and these sounds are very much both. The Rhodes and Wurly samples are quite good to my ears, as well. (And, of course, don't have velocity layers.) Finally you can do some nice EP-like sounds using FM.

The Clavinet isn't very impressive.

There might be better Clav or piano samples available as downloads from the Clavia website. Or you can make your own. (Re-sampling another keyboard into the Wave is about as easy as cooking a frozen pizza.)

To some extent how good of an acoustic piano or clavinet sound you can get from the Wave depends on how much of its sample memory you are willing to devote to those two instruments; if you re-sampled, say, software like Ivory, and loaded it into the Wave with its full decay and sampling every note on the keyboard, that might take up a substantial proportion (most?) of the 180 MB of onboard memory, but it'd surely sound far better than the piano that ships inside the machine. (That piano -- a Yamaha C7 -- is only 1.6 MB!).

Even though the Wave isn't meant to be a traditional sampler per se, playing back realistic pianos and orchestral instruments, it does have some extremely nice samples in it: the strings, the mellotrons, and the accordians are all very good. I also like the marimba, vibraphone, and celesta samples.

You could surely put together a solid collection of sounds for everything except the acoustic piano... with that I think there is a very definite handicap in not having velocity layers; as listeners we have such familiarity with the instrument that we demand a much higher level of realism from it that can't be obtained very well without velocity layers.

[jamesb]

Hey Wout - I'll definitely try to check one out. I think the dealer here in Singapore may have one.

Thanks very much for your comprehensive reply radiospace! You raise a good point about an instrument should sound musical - I guess most listeners won't care if the sound is a brilliant rhodes emulation or not! It sounds like nice keyboard sounds in the rhodes style can be obtained. I guess acoustic piano is not sooo important, because I use a technics p-30 which has a reasonable sound anyway.

I like the idea of mangling real samples to use them for a basis for totally new sounds. I've been playing with the ohm force symptohm melohman vst demo, and that's a great synth for doing this as well!

Thanks again for your help. There's not many sound demos of the wave around on the web it seems, so I'll try and get to play one asap.

[Ivan]

[Wout Blommers]

Ivan

Wout

[radiospace]

[Wout Blommers]

[Ivan]

Of course it cannot be substitute, but it is still better than no velocity response at all. I also have Nord Stage 88, but still prefer to play real piano, because "velocity layers" are unlimited...

[Monk]

Hi Jamesb, Just a watch out for you may be to check out the maximum poliphony (18 notes). I know you Jazz guts like your 11th and 13th chords in the left hand and wizzing about with your right hand....add a little sustain pedal and layer your sounds with piano and strings or rhodes and piano and you are gona get into trouble with hearing note piching if you aren't careful with your arrangements. It might not be a problem but its worth testing out before parting with any cash.

Ian

[jamesb]

Thanks Ian

I just picked up a nord electro pretty cheap, which I'm pretty happy with. And a secondhand nord lead 2 is on the way too! I guess it was a bit wishful thinking that the wave would be able to do it all
Thanks for all the advice
james