All drum and synth sounds produced simultaneously by the Nord Modular without any multi-tracking.

This is my attempt at creating a ‘one synth’ cover of Enjoy the Silence, using only 4 sound patches on my Clavia Nord Modular G1 (with DSP Expansion) and sequenced from scratch using Steinberg Cubase 3.1 on my old Atari ST.

Just for fun, I thought it might be interesting to use Logic Pro (running on a Mac), synchronised to Cubase on the Atari using MIDI Time Code, to playback the original DM vocals (on track 1) in sync with the audio coming from the Nord Modular. Tracks 2 and 3 are recording the audio coming from the Nord Modular, along with reverb from my Soundcraft mixer recording on track 4.

Playlist:-
0.06 Nord Modular + original DM vocals
4.28 Individual sounds and sequences
8.03 Nord Modular instrumental

The instrumental section of the video includes screenshots of the Nord Modular editor software showing how each of the 4 patches is constructed.

Nord Modular Patches:-
Slot A = Drums (CPU = 89.3% Poly = 1)
Slot B = Bassline and Bells (CPU = 49.4% Poly = 3)
Slot C = Vox Chords, Phaser Strings and Vox Melody (CPU = 76% Poly = 7)
Slot D = Guitar, Filter Sweep Bass and Synth (CPU = 95.7% Poly = 4)

Nord Modular audio outputs:-
1+2 = Dry / No effects
3+4 = Hall reverb from my Soundcraft mixer

The Nord Modular G1 is 16 note polyphonic (32 with the DSP expansion) and can play 4 patches at once (in Slot A, B, C and D), but when 3 or 4 patches are used simultaneously, the polyphony can quickly drop to just 1 or 2 notes per patch, depending on the complexity and CPU load of each sound patch.

I wanted to include the brass sound that plays behind the guitar melody, along with some guitar pickup noise, but adding more modules to any of the patches caused the polyphony to drop and become unplayable, due to the high CPU load of the 4 patches.

The audio outputs of the Nord Modular completely mute for almost 1 second whenever a new patch is loaded, so it’s not possible to use MIDI program change messages to switch between sounds once Cubase starts playing back, so all the drum and synth sounds (14 sounds in total) have to fit into the 4 sound patches, by using as few sound modules as possible to keep the balance between low CPU load and usable polyphony.

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