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I very nearly bought one several times but didn’t
Lol, I've still got my Nord Micro Modular but it's in a box.
Clavia never got around to making a stable editor for MacOS X and I no longer have any Mac capable of running MacOS9.2.1 to edit the beast and If I had I've already forgotten how Opcode OMS worked to set up the midi routings from scratch.
Back in the day I created and shared plenty of presets on the Nord Modular mailing list
Even thought the MicroModular was considered a '1 voice' synth it was possible to create polyphonic patches for it.
If I recall correctly I squeezed out 9 voices out of the thing before it choked...
It was also fun to make 'auto comp' patches using the sequencers and drum-synths it had.
(Ie. drums, baseline and 3 finger chord + lead was all possible with some creative patching).
It did have its own 'sound' that is quite hard to re-create...
...maybe it's down to the DSP Chip and AD/DA it has...
I have tried the current editors and they do work but I don't get the 'tingly feelings' it used to create, the 'magic' is gone.
Cheers!
It is (was?) a classic. The Micromodular was my first synth. Learned a ton using it. At one point I had three of them at once. It's too bad it wasn't kept alive.
Lol. Still have the MicroModular including a 20 year old notebook running Win98 for the editor. James Clark’s Nord Modular Handbook is a great resource.
Oh yeah. I loved how easy the UI was, and connecting things. That set the standard for me. Higher level, not too low, easy on the eyes, just right (for me). G2 Editor works on the latest Windows, does G1's editor???
@samu Yes, it was actually a stripped down one-DSP version of the Modular which could be expanded to 8 DSPs if I remember correctly. With "current editors", do you mean alternative ones that run on latest OSes?
Making the editor talk to the Modular can be a challenge indeed, mainly because finding an appropriate MIDI interface and drivers is an art.
Ha! Not a bad idea
Good question. It's been a while. Got an old Win XP Laptop that works but I should try to find a solution that also works reliably inside VMWare Player I guess.
I think for its time, it was maybe the most revolutionary instrument ever. And that mailing list was the greatest - coming home daily and opening up amazing patches right from an email - are you kidding me?
I still have both the kybd and rack, but they don’t get used much. Regardless, I’m very sentimentally attached to them. Have a few old computers that can run them, but times have moved on.
I'he just found an interesting thread talking about running the official editor on an Intel Mac using Wine:
https://electro-music.com/forum/topic-62683.html
Edit: Here's a streamlined version that should be easy to use and, in contrast to Homebrew, work on older MacOS versions too:
http://www.stage-engine.com/micro-modular-1/
Gotta try that, I haven't yet thought of using Wine!
There’s a version floating around that incorporates a runtime version of Wine. I have used it on OSX, but it’s been a while and I’m not sure how current it is.
@rs2000 from the point of view of someone who I consider a Drambo expert, is there anything you miss from the Nord Modular environment when using Drambo? Software UI? Specific DSP modules? The hardware itself?
http://byte-order.com/site/index.php/nord-modular-editor-byte-order/
this runs great on my M1. original beta editor used to crash all the time even on my Macbook running Snow Leopard so this is a dream come true.
here's a video sequencing my micro modular from Drambo.
Hmmm, Drambo has evolved a lot since 2020 and the modules I'm missing are becoming less and less.
One of my favorite features, the Morph Groups and N-to-1 / 1-to-N switches have been added now and there's a new Formant OSC too.
Other significant additions are the Wavetable Oscillator and the Analog Filter modules, giving me a sound quality that I wasn't able to get from the NM.
I have to say that after diving into Drambo and getting more and more Nord Modular type modules over time, I'm now not looking back anymore except for good memories and yeah, a little box that can be powered on and used almost instantly.
But even that can be done now in a better way using an old iPhone (I'm using a 6 Plus) or iPad Mini attached to a class compliant MIDI controller with audio interface.
A significant difference in using Drambo is simplicity of patching. And using racks and foldable sections, patching has become a much more fun process for me.
Add to this the genius polyphonic property of signals and the new Many-to-Poly module.
And also add to this the now quite powerful sequencer and the fact that there is a time signal that can be hacked easily for doing nonlinear sequencing with modules that support it.
Another significant difference, as funny as it may sound, is the Graphic Shaper module. It's only a simple X-to-Y curve but it has so many useful purposes! Wave shaping, oscillator waveform drawing (now also with splines), velocity curves, nonlinear calculations, hysteresis, freely definable note scales, you name it.
A similar advantage is in the Graphic Modulator which is a somewhat hidden gem - Polymetric sequences with mixed meters inside the same sequence combined with the time input makes it a powerful "analog" step sequencer that goes far beyond what CV and Gate/Vel sequencers can do.
So no, from the feature standpoint I don't miss it anymore today but I wouldn't want to miss the Nord Modular experience at all!
I have learned so much during a period in which I had much more spare time than now and I think that I still profit from it.
@cryptonym Wow, what a great find!!! Thank you!!!
@rs2000 Thank you so much for this comparison of Nord Modular and Drambo. NM has always been something I've wanted to try, but I was always afraid it would be too complicated and I'd be overwhelmed by the possibilities. So I'd better stay with the Drambo and focus on it.
Wow, that editor makes me want to buy a used Nord Modular G1 again, but the used prices are outrageous. One of my most productive music-making periods was when all I had was the G1 keyboard and a Yamaha A5000. G2's MIDI modules were a pretty cool upgrade. Some folks preferred the sharper rawer sound of the G1 though. Wasn't it Autechre's Cichli Suite (or EP7?) that was made mostly on the G1? Before they discovered Max/MSP?
Good to know!
Literally first hardware synth i ever bought, more than 20 years ago !! Pretty amazing little machine .. owned it a long time and then sold it just to finalise funds for Modular G2 engine .. extremely great machine, it's a pity they don't make it anymore (from totally fucking ridiculous reason - they stoped because EU motherfuckers blacklisted some material which was used in chips they used for modular G1/G2).
Here some sounds / melodies i made with G2 engine ... in my opinion in digital synths G2 engine is still unbeaten. Massive.
http://files.dendy.sk/index.php?dir=nord_modular_G2
Btw there is fully working demo of G2 for Win (works completely without Hardware) .. good for getting idea how amazing it was .. Works also on MAC but unfortunately you need old PowerPC MAC :-D :-D
scroll to the bottom of downloads page
https://www.nordkeyboards.com/downloads/nord-modular-g2
Interesting. Maybe that period was your most productive because you had enough time to focus only on these two?
The A5000 is a beast in itself as well, still have mine 😄
I wouldn't describe the G1 sound as sharp or raw, more like Roland synths probably. Filters are not as beefy as the Moogs or Oberheims but not as aggressive as a Wasp or MS-20. It can basically be all Nord Leads in one, although its DSPs would be greatly exhausted when trying to build e.g. a Nord Lead 3 with it, not to speak of a barely usable UI compared to the NL3.
G2 was definitely more round and firm in terms of bass .. i remember i tried recreate few patches from micro modular at G2 and they had much better sound in bass spectrum.. much more powerful bass .. rest was very similiar ..
I would say G2 engine vas very very close to sound of Nord Lead 3 (i was always suspicious NL3 inside contains just code reused from G2), and Micro Modular was more like Nord Lead 1/2 .. it had nothing with D/A, it was very clean they re-worked some basic code elements (mainly oscillators, but a little bit also filters) between NL1/2/micromodular and NL3/G2 ...
@dendy These sound great, thanks!
The G2 demo is only 1vc polyphonic, right?
Now I'm thinking about how polyphony could be multiplied with Windows docker or containerd instances... Hmmm...
The Nord Lead 1, Lead 2, and the Modular G1 sounded the same - to my ears, very sharp with aliasing.
The Nord Lead 2X, Lead 3, and G2 had a rounder, more modern HiFi sound. To my ears. The later models used higher resolution DACs, and higher internal resolution when patching audio modules together, or something along those lines. It's been years since I owned them, but I was pretty OCD about the differences. Kinda like the A3000 being crunchier for drums versus the A4000 and A5000.
Yeah, that was back when I was more interested in sound design than finishing songs.
I wish Yamaha made an FX box with those cutting edge A-series (and EX5) FX...
Oh and in the G2 demo, some modules (including the essential MIDI input) are disabled.
I've found a hacked Windows version though:
https://electro-music.com/forum/topic-57892.html&postorder=asc
😃
Years ago, i saw a liveact in Stuttgart, i never forgot.
The guy used only a 303, a 707 and a lot of Micro Modular and FX.
The audience got completely nuts every few minutes.
Greetz Chris
pretty cool... seriously considering buying some cheap small windows notebook for this :-)
hm, no idea
Lead 2 / 2x had exactly same firmware (same code) just 2x had "better" D/A s (24bit/96khz on NL3 vs. i think 16bit/48khz on NL2)
Lead 3 had updated firmware - different code for oscilaltors, filters, so it sounds lot different from 1/2/2x/G1 ... G2 had most likely same code base as Lead 3 (but i don't have proof for that, just when i compared in depth sound of oscillators and filters)
New Lead 4 has again different codebase and even Lead A1 has different codebase from Lead 4
Thanks for the detailed answer! I can definitely see the allure of going back to a tool that one is intimately familiar with and keep discovering through that process, either as a creative outlet or technical learning. I've seen your creative uses for the Graphic Shaper and Modulator, it is indeed crazy how powerful can a simple concept be.
Makes sense. Man, twiddling knobs on the G2 keyboard and the NL3 was awesome. Best UI and UX ever in a hardware synth, to me.
Didn't Clavia back in the day say that they would never put effects in their synths. (G1 didn't have a reverb, but one could be made with delay lines - it has a distinct sound like Amazing Noise Reverb FDN, versus the G2's reverb which was really nice, for its time.
Did you ever get the Syntakt?
@StudioES The NL3 is still my dream synth for hands-on sound design. It's the fastest to work with if I have a certain synth sound in mind and would like to make it real. I just can't give it up for that very reason.