After years of compromise, it seems like a great time to be in the market for a stage keyboard. I’m biased coming from a piano background, but I’ve always loved hammer-action instruments, even for playing sounds other than acoustic. Earlier this month, I noted that Yamaha’s MOX line offered hammer action in a 32.6-pound keyboard for US$1699.

Nord has a hammer action offering of their own: the new Nord Electro 3 HP. It sheds some keys, with a 73-key E-E range keybed, but also some pounds, weighing a very luggable 24.25 pounds. The “handmade,” Swedish-built instrument has some other nice features, too:

• Nord piano/sample libraries, including licensed Melletron and Chamberlin sounds
• Modeled organs, tonewheels, and transistors (C1, rotary speaker)
• Four keyboard curves
• New delay effect with tap tempo, rate, stereo ping-pong
• Up to four live location settings

There’s also control pedal compatibility with Yamaha FC7, Roland EV-5/7, Korg EXP2/XVP10 and Fatar VP-25.

I have just one complaint in all of this. Nice as it is seeing these instruments with built-in – and increasingly nice – sounds, I would easily trade a computer piano instrument for the onboard samples. But that’s another story, and of course, I absolutely understand why gigging keyboardists might not want to worry about the added stress of operating a computer.

A representative of Nord tells us that the keyboard, shipping this month, will have an estimated street price of US$2599. (Like I said, the one complaint is, you’d better want to use the internal sounds.)

http://www.nordkeyboards.com/

If you don’t care about hammer action, the Nord Stage 2 released earlier this year added the new organ engine and MIDI over USB (’bout time). More details on that product page of all the sampled/modeled sound engines.

Nord owners, we’d love to hear from you. And, boy that red sure is purty.

Boys and girls alike can feel free to crush musically on Au Revoir Simone. In a gloomy world of sound-alike synthpop, the Brooklyn trio has forged their own, unique sound, a peerless breed of sensitive synthy goodness. The songs are relentlessly intimate and honest, genuine rock writing instead of overburdened pastiche. I think a lot of us growing up wanted to be able to sound like this, when we picked up that first electronic keyboard.

And yes, for keyboard lovers, there’s something really special about seeing three keyboards, with no guitars, no drums, and no boys in sight. Love the Beatles as I do, there was apparently some point in the 60s in which everyone decided we’d be stuck with one instrumentation and any females present would be vocalists only, but Au Revoir Simone is a sign of hope.

On my first listen, the new album “Still Night, Still Light” has more and more clearly polished ideas than any of their outings so far. I have to spend some more time with it, but I find it’s impossible not to just feel good listening to their work, and that’s a nice thing for music to do.

On to how you can grab the album: physical CD pre-orders and vinyl are available from the band’s website, but Amie Street has an absurdly good deals on the music, available right now:

Au Revoir Simone: Still Night, Still Light [Amie Street]

(and yes, apologies for those outside the US – if you spot deals in your neighborhood, let us know)

Update: Note that all four albums, including the new one, are also on emusic. (Thanks, zenzen in comments!) Emusic albums may not be available everywhere, but that could help you out in at least some parts of the world.

Amie Street uses flexible pricing based on popularity. When I picked up the album, it was at US$5.90, but that price will creep upwards as more people grab it. Here’s why it’s cheap, though: for 24 hours, you can subtract 25% off the price, and for some unspecified period of time, when you buy this album, you get the first three albums from the band free. In other words, you’re talking around six bucks for all four albums, as 320 kbps MP3s. I have no affiliate relationship with Amie Street and there’s no one from ARS’ PR and publicity calling me to bug me to say this. I just expect you’ll get a couple of bucks in value from each album. If you’re not sure, Amie Street has full streams of each album.

Now, keyboard spotting anyone? The Nord Electro 2 is always front and center, there’s a Novation BassStation, I think, the KORG microKORG, lots of drum machines… carry on.

Hardware sequencers were a fantastic idea: you had a box that did nothing but sequence other gear. Then along came the computer, then the idea of trying to make the computer do absolutely everything all the time, and the standalone MIDI sequencer disappeared. In a bizarre twist of fate, it’s back — on Nintendo DS.

Jed (beatsnbleeps.com) writes to let us know about his DS sequencer, DStep. It’s partly an “homage to the KP3″ from Korg, though unless your fingertip is the size of a DS stylus point, it should be a bit more accurate touch-wise. It’s a very elegant little step sequencer, shown here controlling a Nord Micro Modular. (The modular patch you see on the computer screen is the Nord editing software.) Hardware MIDI support gets hacked into the DS via Collin Meyer’s DS MIDI cable hardware/code solution.

It’s funny, because to me this brings the way you integrate a computer into a studio back full circle. It’s not that you dump the computer — on the contrary, you simply use it as a component in a set of gear.

As for mobile gadgets to work with, this also illustrates some advantages of the DS over the iPhone — well, aside from the obvious facts that it’s far cheaper, you’re not saving up battery life to make calls, and you can play Mario Kart. The old-fashioned game hardware buttons actually come in handy, and they’re ergonomically placed, you get the added precision of a stylus, and the DS hardware is more hackable. Multi-touch would be nice on those faders, though.

If you’re ready to give this a go, here’s what you need:

DS MIDI hack

Tob’s DS MIDI Website

DStep details and ROM download

It’s still in development, so we’ll be watching.

Previously: GrooveStep step sequencer / pattern maker for DS

Who woulda thunk it? Early 2007 has brought one big synth announcement after another. We’ve got some official details of the Nord Wave synth from Clavia, and this new keyboard looks like it may please long-time Nord fans and newcomers alike.

Clavia has released “Musikmesse preview information”, so specs may change. But here’s a basic look at what they’re promising:

1. Sampled waveforms: Oscillators can now use full waveforms (not single wavetables, Clavia hastens to add), while still routing through fully-analog circuitry.
2. Oscillator models: Virtual analog, FM, wavetable, sample-playback can be applied in combination (which I hear is all the rage these days). And you can load in custom waveforms, as well, via fully user-definable memory areas (so you can delete samples you hate). Clavia even promises it’ll offer additional, free waves on their website. An included software sample editor lets you tweak samples.
3. Morphing: Morph “almost any parameter” via mod wheel, expression, velocity, or pitch, with assignable “morph scenarios” and morph “timelines.”
4. Filters: 24db analog-modeled resonant filters, low-, high-, band-pass filters with envelope and velocity control, combinations of filter types, and formant filters.
5. Effects: EQ, delay with tap tempo, tube-style amp with overdrive, reverb.
6. Pitch stick: Clavia’s signature wooden pitch stick allows precise bend and vibrato.

So this means hardware makers no longer feel the pressure of software synths, right? Wrong. Clavia goes out of their way to tout hardware-specific features in the Messe preview brochure. They single out a number of points:

1. Onboard hardware controls for everything with no need for paging through menus (that’s good, and a lesson that could be learned by a lot of hardware synth makers).
2. No load times, because there’s no hard drive. (They have a point.)
3. “Ultra-low latency.” (Well, it darned well better have ultra-low latency. I don’t recall a whole lot of latency from any of my hardware synths. And I’ve had quite impressive latency from my software synths, as well. But I digress.)

Software defensiveness aside, the synth sounds like it may be terrific. To anyone who said this was a dull Messe trade show, all I can think is that you really aren’t fond of keyboards.

Pricing / Availability: Unknown / Soon-ish.

Nord Wave Coverage Elsewhere

Matrixsynth has some of the other details on the keyboard, via Harmony Central’s forums:

1. Resynthesized waveforms; no look-up tables, meaning no aliasing across the pitch range.
2. Onboard USB for controller use, transferring waveforms
3. 2 MB sample memory (so, not much, in other words — any upgrade possibilities there? Why not flash expansion?)
4. Pots, not endless rotaries, because users want to know “when they reached the bottom.”

For video coverage, see Sonic State.

And don’t miss the imaginary Behringer rip-off April Fool’s on Vintage Synth Explorer, via Matrixsynth.

I’d be afraid to even joke about that.

Haven’t you always wanted to be a sexy Japanese lead keyboard virtuoso heading her own fusion power trio?

Haven’t you always wanted to be Hiromi?

I expect some of you would settle for being the bass player. Watch as Hiromi tears away a grand and a Nord synth, simultaneously:

For more on Hiromi, check out her official Telarc site, free downloadable EPs, more video, and from my Keyboard Magazine colleague Michael Gallant, a feature story on Hiromi herself plus some how-to-play-like-her tutorials:

Keyboard interview/feature

How-to’s: Motivic Manipulation, Two Fingers on One Note, Two-Hand Attack (Kung-Fu, indeed), Return of Kung-Fu World Champ (as shown in the video), Packing it In

And in Japanese, her official site / blog / photo diary