hello and welcome to anon's TV my name is Jack Duprey Oz is behind the camera we've got a new lighting setup woo and I've been instructed by the powers at B that I should tell you about the Nord lead A1 I've had an hour with it and this is what I've learned this is the first patch when I turned it on he oh [Music] [Applause] yeah standard poly synth Fair interestingly price at the moment between a Juno X and an Aki MPC 61 nestled in there is the Nord lead A1 been out for a long time I did a video many moons ago but still rocking and still selling them what have I learned in the last hour let's see if I can tell you Oz and you behind the camera cuz I I'm I'm swearing you with the red keyboards he was like does this do bass and we'll find out we we'll see if it does bass uh one thing to mention is in this mode which is performance mode hey there are essentially four of the same synth here that I can layer a b c and d so if I tick off the light in performance mode we're hearing one [Music] program and then when we're in performance mode we can stack four of those so very powerful in terms of multi- tality and each one will respond to MIDI so they sold a little desktop version of this which I haven't seen personally I can see a lot of people wanting that if you've got a sequencer that sends out M information you don't want the keyboard you could buy the rack version but even this is super compact super sturdy metal even saves size without the normal wooden n cheek fair so very small and uh portable repeating myself but with that multi-ton brity heavy stuff shift in it and I've initialized the whole performance in it patch from the get-go what's Innovative is that in the oscillator section yes we can see our traditional waveforms here s triangle s and square but the magic of this bad boy is that when we go above there we start getting A1 like was that LLY day one hey it's these extended analog waves so let's have a listen to a saw wave and then go up to A1 it's a mix you here but it's in conjunction with this oscillator configuration below it where it says pit at the moment so pitch and it's all very clearly on here Os Os config pitch so let's go to shape and then we can turn this and hear this so I'm moving through a A1 let's go to more interesting waveform you look down here like uh A3 so it's like a humpy thing into a less humpy [Music] thing and we can start getting that moving with the LFO which is already pre-programmed [Music] in or we could turn that off or use just a single shot envelope [Music] here and we'll keep going through if it was a wave table we'd be scanning through that wave table there but I find that pretty cool that's just with the shape if I flick it back to pitch you'll hear it Go all wibbly wobbly so that's cool we got Pitch oscillator sync [Music] classic so think processes like that sinking oscillators changing the pitch that takes a bit of knowledge it takes up more real estate because you need multiples of those knobs as I understand it it was an evolution of how successful the synthesizer section was from the Nord stage 2 and I'm a I was using that keyboard loved it I'm big nor stage user and I can attest to the fact that sometimes when someone says yeah I want like a um D- tuned sore pad instead of having to all of that out and about about we could just do that now so we'll go to a S Wave I can go across to here oh dtune and [Music] then and then filter it down [Music] bit more [Music] Decay so there we have we've just made that instead of having to find two s waves detune them super quick and I like the fact that it's written out here it's not too crazy so we've got a pretty standard poly syn sound there oh yeah say I want to just fatten it up instead of again looking to lots of individual visual oscillator controls there's a Unison button here so check it out no [Music] Unison so that's multiplied our oscillators exponentially and we've got that kind of fatness no UNIS but say I do want fatness oh I'm only using one of my syns at the moment I've got a whole three other since so I could copy and paste to C and now when I go to C if I use the pitch thing here put that up 12 then and we can double tap it just to hear it in Solo double tap this layered see how hands on and dope that is that's cool and then up here I remember I was like oh cool I can go to C pan that and then go to a pan that again solo it uh let's get some Unison on that bad boy and then go back to this one [Music] comboed I dig that I said about some bass now I've got C and D over here let's put a base in the left hand see if that's possible if I hold down the program and turn it I can flick through the program presets not the performance bre which is pretty cool cool nice big Bas sound there if I tap all three now they're all on together but I want that just to be in the left hand shift split it did it see it stops off at C there actually if I go shift split and then a bit more do I get more yeah up to C cool now when I put them all back on so let's do that thing I did at the beginning let's make these a bit spicier let's go to C and D here's another thing I learned is next to shift is multifocus so I want to shift multifocus they're flashing now and I want to put Reverb on both of them select a Reverb cool and then put them all back [Music] on pretty cool so we built that up the other mad thing about Nord stuff is we've got three a three part patch there Bas in the left poly since in the right we can morph things so yes it might be limited in terms of LFO numbers and amp envelope like envelope numbers but we have this morph over here so we can get the wheel doing stuff let's show you what I mean anything with a light next to it can be morphed and moved with a wheel pedal or velocity let's go to these two and we'll go multifocus and I'm going to put the frequency of the filter down but hold wheel and turn it up to maximum so that means hopefully now when I play this wheel is down at the moment and it will go up to the maximum [Music] filter and I put that on with the base [Music] other things we can put on morph just cuz that sounds a bit lame to me is I could turn on on these two again I tap these two get them together multifocus yes I want to put on a delay and I want to hear it I want to ping pong it shift to ping pong and I want the amount to go from zero on the Wheel to about halfway and then here you'll hear [Music] that the filters opening up and the delay so you're getting the idea we could get crazy things happening and lots of subtlety with four S all of those assigning to the more functionalities that that's pretty cool now something that I've never seen on a Nord before which is stop the presses is this thing called mutate sound and randomize sound I'm going to actually move away from this patch we'll find something else here in the presets so I can see the wheel and the velocity are mapped at certain [Music] things if I hold wheel and mutate sound it will use almost like early AI to suggest different it's just assigned different things to this without me knowing [Music] it so that's that one hold it again [Music] mutate you know so I dig that let's I want it I find that that's very interesting so if I go shift in it sound and we kill those other ones so we just have one program going and then I go wheel [Applause] mutate it randomly generated that for me from an initial patch again mutate so that's interesting if if you're like oh god I've made a sound I'm kind of stuck for ideas that's a derivative randomized bit but we can go further I can go wheel randomized sound and [Music] that'll do do another one sorry o so crazy stuff right now you can just not holding that I can go shift randomized sound and I'm getting full [Music] random shift [Music] [Music] random I've seen it featured a few times on core keyboards where you'll see a little dice symbol or there'll be a randomized parameters but fully I should have started with the video with that really basically just turn it on shift randomized sound weird wave noises there we go that's cool other Innovative things in nordland that I haven't seen them carry on was this idea of a like button so if I go through and I go okay I like that and I filter it down and I'm like I'm kind of working on that on other Nord keyboards there's often on the stages they have a live memory which is essentially an autosave place for your patches so if you're you can use it as it'll always save itself you'll have a number of sounds there and that's what this like feature is like you've got 50 patches in there but they reset with the power cycling so in a session say you were just making sounds and you've got a bit of ADHD you might want to flitter around different patches and and not have to worry about saving them and just leaving so let's we've got to this patch let's make it weirder by putting a bit more drive on [Music] it it's got a thumbs up and I go shift like and that saved it into like three because I've had this keyboard on and I figured out this only a few minutes ago so uh that's like three I don't need to worry let's go back to that patch that's how it started out but if I go to my like patches there was my edited one do you see what I mean and I got 50 of those that's just really cool anytime if you think I like that but I'm not committed to saving it you just go shift like and it puts it into one of these and if you turn it off so be it you've lost all those special three patches hey I won't carry on too much because they're the big headline features this idea of oscillators or multiple oscillators being grouped into configurations lots of very wellth thought out preconnected Connections in there along with mutation randomization liking the one thing is this keyboard keyed is really nice and I love the form it's one of the rare 49 key keyboards that I think suits the form it just seems proper there's just no after touch on it which would would have been nice uh can I get over it yes I can because a lot of the time in um live environments I don't want that aftertouch that subtlety perhaps but that's just me you still got the same great handmade wooden pitch stick hand finished Granite modulation wheel solid metal these things are built like a tank I won't go too much further into it thanks Oz for being here and yeah that's it I'm not to do anymore if you like what we're doing please consider subscribing if you don't let us know we learn from the hate and uh yeah let us know what other keyboards at this price range would you go for over this if it wasn't the Nord lead A1 and I'll see you [Music] soon [Music] [Music] d [Music] yeah