Music review: Seeing red with the Nord Electro 4D SW61

Are you a keyboardist specializing in organ music? Are you a fan of the B3 Hammond, the VX and the Farfisa? Then you might want to take a look at the Electro 4D, a model in the Nord series locally distributed by Lyric that features impressive emulations of these three popular organs.  

You open up the Electro and the most riveting feature on the board is a group of black, white and brown faders called drawbars. What they basically do is change the tone of your organ sound in real time, from bassy to top-heavy, based on the sound’s fundamental harmonics. 

 

Drawbar faders are analog cool  

 

These drawbars look and feel very special. They are a loving throwback to the `60s analog cool, with those small squarish knobs making a clicking sound as you move them up or down. They also feel heavy enough to stay on a definite spot, unlike other faders whose values can change at the slightest wobble. 

 

But what is an organ without that wah-wah? It’s not an organ if it doesn’t have that bobbing, rotating sound, and Nord has made sure you can get a whole load of that at your fingertips. You can adjust the rate of that wah-wah to taste (listen to the first sample below), add tremolo and phasing effects, as well as several types of reverb, from room to stage, with the wetness of the reverb adjustable via a rotary knob.

 

Another cool feature of the Electro is the waterfall action of the keys. You cannot know this until you have actually played the instrument. An organist typically plays very fast passages called glissandi, and he does this by sliding his palm up or down across the keys. The Electro holds up to this abuse quite well. But will it respond just as quickly to gentleness?

 

Reponds to subtle playing 

 

To test this, I shift my sound from organ to piano. The Electro has also made available on its board six whole banks of sounds from outside the organ family. I load the first Grand Piano from the bank and proceed to play an impromptu piano piece. 

 

You can hear them clearly in this second sample.   

 

The keys respond very well to the touch changes throughout the piece, even without the softening benefits of a sustain pedal. 

 

The sounds are all editable and renewable, as more can be downloaded from the accompanying DVDs as well as from the Nord website through the free sample editor and sound manager. The sample editor is fairly simple to use (on my Mac at least). Double click on it to get the program rolling, open it up, and drag the files to the list. Nord boasts of a lossless compression algorithm that allows it to make available a whole load of sounds without compromising sound quality, and they are true to their word. 

 

Some of the sounds I tested include a choir, a Chapman bass, a Korg string sound and a curious thing called a pianet, which is basically like a tiny toy piano with a short release time. I find it cool that they license sounds from third parties like Korg and Kirk Hunter, which is in tune with my life philosophy of “don’t beat them, just join them!”

 

Despite price, it had me at red

 

I have nothing bad to say about the Electro. It had me at red. The shiny elegant wooden sides, the analog drawbars, the arresting design unity of old and new, and the overall feel of the instrument at my fingertips are a thing of beauty and wonder. 

 

My only real complaint about it would be the price. At around P130,000, it is much too steep for me, given my needs as a TV and film music composer working mostly at home. Since I also do not gig very often anymore, I do not really need sounds from the get-go, and Nord’s palette of orchestra sounds, which I require for my work, is understandably lacking, as I feel it’s not really the Electro’s job to become anybody’s string machine. It has no pitchbend or modulation wheel which would have helped sculpt the string sounds I need.

 

At this point the Nord Stage appears to be a better option, with its full-range keyboard and similar drag-and drop functionalities for sampled sounds, but even that gives me pause because of the price – nearing P200, 000 around this time. 

 

I am suddenly reminded of that time when I was invited to host the launch of the Nord line a few years back. 

 

I knew what I needed, and after much thought, I bought the Nord Lead 2X, their popular synthesizer. It was offered to me an introductory price along with a cool gig bag, which was wonderful. After the event, I saw that one customer had bought a Nord Stage for her son, who was probably not even 12 years old, and I remember thinking to myself: I hope that keyboard will be loved!

 

But if I were an organist doing, oh well, two weddings a day and being paid P15,000 or more for a two-hour gig, it would be so uncool not to have the Electro as my workhorse! Photo courtesy of Nordkeyboards.com

---

Jazz and folk artist Pearlsha Abubakar plays gigs under the name Isha. Her debut LP "Time and Again" was released under Candid Records. Her latest work as composer can be heard in the movie “My Lady Boss” starring Marian Rivera and Richard Gutierrez. Visit her online for her more personal work.The views expressed in this article are solely her own.