Audio Production Techniques
Programming a Nord Lead 2 || The Play Mode and Amplifier
Today I'm going to cover some of the basic paramaters in programming a Nord lead.
To set a program from scratch hold the shift button and hit the manual button. This will load up a program ready to start from scratch.
After that one of the first things to set will be the Play Mode setting.
Play Mode
To set a Play Mode (poly, mono, legato) for each program hit the SPECIAL botton to cycle through the settings.
(INSERT SPECIAL TOGGLE IMG HERE)
Possible intentions for different play mode settings:
Poly - String style pad program
Mono - Bass program
Legato - Flute style program
Amplifier
The amplifier envelope contains a Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release modifiers. These are all used in creating the sounds its basic shape (soft, slow, short, long etc.)
Attack
The attack paramater is used to define how long a sound takes to hit its loudest point in volume after a key has been pressed. If the attack is set at fully counter-clockwise then the attack is straight away with no fade in. If the attack is moved counter clock wise it can take the sound a few seconds for the sound to fade to its loudest point, this can be useful when trying to create synth pads that fade in slowly over time
Decay
After the attack phase the decay is used to set how long the it should take the sound to fade down into the sustain level, for example:
If the attack is set to no attack, the decay is set to very short and the sustain is set to nothing then this will result in a sound that is arcade like.
Sustain
The sustain is section the sound reaches after the decay stage. Once this has happened, the sound will stay steady at this volume until the key is released.
The sustain parameter is used to set a level, while the A,D and R are all used to set fades.
Release
This knob is used to set how long the sound will take to fade out after the key has been released.
Gain
This is used to adjust the overall volume of the sound. This is used mainly to balance one program against another.
In the next article I will cover the filter sections and Oscillators