In spite of all of the pressures of adulthood to spend my time thinking about grown up stuff, in those moments when other people seem to read self-improving books or compare rates on fixed term savings accounts, I spend that time thinking about synthesizers. I think about other things too, like microphones and compressors, but much of the time it’s synthesizers. This is something I’ve been doing since I was probably 12 years old. Synthesizers were my gateway drug into all things audio.
Back in the mid-eighties my desire to find a cooler alternative to playing the upright piano in the dining room had a natural home in the various flavours of synth pop which made the eighties as musically interesting as they were. We were going to have to wait until the end of that decade for dance music to become mainstream enough for me to hear about it. But in the meantime I spent my time ‘synth-spotting’ on Top of the Pops and poring over records by Depeche Mode, the Human League and particularly Yazoo (Yaz in the US). If I had a synth hero it was, and probably still is, Vince Clarke.
I’ve never really scratched my synth ‘itch’ in its purest form - in hardware. I’ve owned a couple of eighties analogue synths but it was only when computers opened the software synth floodgates and I was able to indulge in the acquisitive trolley-dash of classic hardware in virtual form that I was able to confirm what I already knew - Synths you don’t own are far more exciting than synths you do. For a synth to be more than a toy you have to need it rather than want it! It has to pass that crucial test that all gear needs to pass for it to be worth spending real money on - it has to solve a problem you actually have. And I have such a problem.
I play keys is a band, it’s a fun project without professional aspirations. But we are quite good if I say so myself. When I joined this band I felt sure that given my technical bent, and bulging plugin folder, I’d be more than comfortable with a MacBook Pro, a midi controller keyboard and a copy of Mainstage but very soon after trying this laptop system I found that while the creative opportunities were effectively limitless, and the reliability I was initially nervous about wasn’t the issue I feared it might be, I really disliked using a software-based rig.
I’m fundamentally a bass player (pun intended) and I’m used to having one instrument which does everything. A laptop, with its associated bits and pieces is the antithesis of this and so I bought the first keyboard instrument I’d bought since my mid 20s. Needing to cover pianos, electric pianos and a lot of organs I bought a Nord Electro 6D. The 73 note version with the waterfall keyboard. Compact, lightweight, sturdy and with an excellent gig bag I could get myself into the venue in a single trip from the car and all without even any external power supplies to forget.
A couple of years on from this decision I don’t regret buying the Nord. They are expensive but if you use one you can understand why they are so popular. But feature creep is inevitable and while 90% of the uses I’m putting my humble Electro to are still served by the core functionality of pianos and organs it does so well, increasingly I find things I simply can’t do because of a lack of some key features. I knew these features were missing when I bought it, I just didn’t realise I’d miss them. Those features include a proper, synth filter, a pitch bend, a modulation wheel and crucially, portamento. These features look suspiciously like a synthesizer…
So given my history of synth-nerdery, wouldn’t I jump on this as being that most valuable of things in the life of a synth-head - a justified synth purchase! Well possibly, but in spite of nearly pressing the button a on few supplementary synth purchases I’ve held off because I really value having a rig comprising a single instrument. I have no desire to disappear behind a wall of keyboards. The Nord Stage 4 adds all of these features, but at a cost I can’t really justify for a hobby band. But if we’re talking fantasy Christmas presents, no need for such restraint!
While the Electro 6D can do synth sounds, it does it via a sample playback engine. The Stage 4, among many, many other things, adds the fully specified synth engine to the organs and pianos I like so much. It has the missing pitch and mod controls, portamento and of course a filter. I’m reassured to see it also features a, surprisingly difficult to find, arpeggiator with tap tempo so I could follow the band rather than vice-versa, and another feature I wish my Electro had - patch increment/decrement from a footswitch. Not exciting but really useful in busy live sets. Some might think I should be considering ‘real’ analogue synths to complement my rig but I return to my earlier point about a single keyboard solution, and patch recall, and integrated effects… I could go on.
And as this is a Fantasy Christmas present I’ll indulge myself briefly and insist that my Nord Stage 4 also comes in a colour other than red…