The
Clavia
Clavia Digital Musical Instruments (Clavia DMI AB) is a Swedish manufacturer of virtual analog synthesizers, virtual electromechanical pianos and stage pianos, founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 1983 by Hans Nordelius and Mikael Carlsson. Since 1995 ...
Nord Drum is an
analog modeling percussion
synthesizer
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
.
It was first introduced at
NAMM
The NAMM Show is an annual event in the United States that is organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who describe it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...
2012, and was made available in March of 2012. Since then, two updated versions have been released; the Nord Drum 2 & Nord Drum 3P.
Features
The Nord Drum has four channels; in other words, it is capable of playing four different drum sounds at once. Each channel can be triggered either via
MIDI
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...
, or by incoming analog signals; this allows the module to be interfaced with
electronic drum
Electronic drums is a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sounds ...
pads,
piezo triggers, or any suitable analog signal source (such as a
modular synthesizer
Modular synthesizers are synthesizers composed of separate modules for different functions. The modules can be connected together by the user to create a patch. The outputs from the modules may include audio signals, analog control voltages, o ...
), or controlled by a MIDI
sequencer
Sequencer may refer to:
Technology
* Drum sequencer (controller), an electromechanical system for controlling a sequence of events automatically
* DNA sequencer, a machine used to automatically produce a sequence readout from a biological DNA sam ...
,
keyboard
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
, or other
MIDI controller
A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They mos ...
.
Each sound is made up of three parts: Tone, Click, and Noise. Tone is the main section of the sound, and provides the most parametric control of the three. It offers several different oscillator types, and can be tuned to give each sound a distinctive pitch. Noise allows for the addition of harsher, more percussive textures to the sound, suitable for snares, shakers, hi-hats, and the like. Click is mainly concerned with the attack of the sound, and many different click types are available, to allow the attack portion to be fine tuned.
Several of the sound parameters have the ability to respond to velocity, but notably, there is no facility for controlling parameters externally via MIDI. This issue was addressed with the introduction of the Nord Drum 2, which includes a much more robust MIDI implementation, among other improvements.
Nord Drum 2
In April 2013, an updated version of the Nord Drum was announced, dubbed the Nord Drum 2. This version added two more percussive voices, as well as two additional channel inputs for triggering each voice (giving a total of six trigger inputs, one per voice). It also added stereo outputs, mute groups, an improved synthesis engine with updated parametric controls, higher patch storage count, and individual effects per channel. The Drum 2 also features a much more complete MIDI implementation than the original, allowing for precise, individual control of nearly all synthesis engine parameters via incoming MIDI CC messages.
Nord Drum 3/3P
In April 2016, Nord announced the Drum 2's successor, the Nord Drum 3, along with a version featuring six integrated trigger pads, dubbed the 3P. Both editions include an updated user interface for sound editing, 8 individual sound storage banks (in addition to 8 banks for kits), and new delay & reverb master effects. The engine was also modified slightly, seeing the removal of the attack rate/attack mode parameters, reduction in the available "click" types from 36 to 12, and addition of four new "tone" oscillator types - two modelled
T-bridge oscillators, and two others based on
ring modulation
In electronics, ring modulation is a signal processing function, an implementation of frequency mixing, in which two signals are combined to yield an output signal. One signal, called the carrier, is typically a sine wave or another simple w ...
. Notably, the 3P lacks the analog channel trigger inputs of its predecessors, relying on MIDI for input from external pads.
Though two versions (the 3 & 3P) were both originally announced, the former has yet to be made available, and is currently absent from Nord's own product catalog. To date, the 3P is the only available successor to the Nord Drum 2.
References
Further reading
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{{Clavia
Drum machines
Clavia synthesizers