Nord Stage

The drawbuttons in the Nord Stage's organ section. In this example,
the 16', 5 1/3' and 8' drawbuttons have been "pulled out" fully.

The Nord Stage Organ Section provides physical models of three electric organs – the Hammond B3, the Vox Continental, and the Farfisa Compact. Instead of physical drawbars, the Organ section features "drawbuttons" with a set of red LED strips to indicate the position of each drawbar from 0 (fully in) to 8 (fully out). For the Hammond and Vox organ emulations, pressing the "down" button illuminates more LEDs to visually emulate a drawbar being pulled out, while pressing the "up" button does the reverse. Since a real Farfisa organ selects sounds via rocker tabs instead of drawbars, the drawbuttons behave as tabs when the Farfisa emulation is selected on the Stage. The standard set of Percussion, Chorus and Vibrato settings as found on each of the three organs are available, and a rotary speaker emulation (similar to a Leslie speaker), including speed selection and overdrive, is also available. The Organ section is fully polyphonic. The Stage 3 Compact features physical drawbars, replacing the “draw buttons”. These give the performer much more accurate and responsive real time control of the timbre of the organ sound.[12][13]

Playing a Nord Stage 88

The Piano section uses samples of acoustic and electromechanical pianos. The Stage's in-built memory allow multiple sample sets to be installed.[14] While additional sampled piano sets are available as free downloads from Clavia's website, the Stage ships with Yamaha C7 and Steinway Concert Model D grand pianos, Svenska Pianofabriken and Yamaha M5J upright pianos, Yamaha CP80 Electric grand piano, Rhodes Piano, Wurlitzer Electronic Piano, and Hohner Clavinet samples. The Clav EQ buttons allow users to adjust the sound of the Clavinet. Acoustic Piano sounds are stereo samples, which can be switched manually to "Mono Mode", and can be played at 40-note polyphony; electric piano samples are mono and can be played with 60-note polyphony.[12]

The synthesizer panel on a Nord Stage

The Stage Synthesizer combines wavetables with analog oscillators and FM operators. Featuring filter and envelope controls, the Synth Section's timbre knob allows users to move through different sound groups. A number of programs are available to store sounds under three categories – Synth, Pad or Bass.[12] The Synth also includes a 2-band EQ, a glide (portamento) function, and a unison function which is used to thicken the sound. The Synth Section is 16-note polyphonic.[12]

The Nord Stage 2 introduced the additional capability to act as a sampler, playing back pre-recorded instrument sounds. Samples can be downloaded from both Clavia's and other third party websites, and installed using a software application running on a PC or a Mac.[15] Amongst the samples included as standard with the Nord Stage 2 and 3 are those for the Mellotron and Chamberlin tape-based keyboards, which have been exclusively licensed to Clavia.[9] Users can also create their own samples, and load them into the Stage using the tools supplied.[16][17]

This section, unlike the others, does not directly generate sound. Instead, it allows users to control other gear connected via MIDI. Common parameters such as zone, channel, and volume are controllable from the Stage.[12]

The Stage's Effects Section expands on the Electro's effects selection. Included are the Electro's modulation effects (tremolo, auto-pan, ring modulation, auto-wah, and 2 manual wah algorithms), "stomp box" effects (2 algorithms each of phaser (effect), flanger and chorus). The Stage adds a delay module, amplifier modeling (Wurlitzer speaker, Fender Twin Reverb and Roland Jazz Chorus),[18] overdrive, and expands the Electro's 2-band EQ to 3-band. Piano, Organ, and Synth sections can be independently routed through these groups. Two Master Effects are included – a simple compressor, and a 5 algorithm reverb.

Sounds can be stored as Programs, which include the instrument source, effects types, and settings. There are 400 storage locations – 4 banks with 100 programs in each – all of which can be overwritten with user programs. There are 300 independent storage locations for Synth patches.[19]

The Nord Stage is multitimbral – each of the Piano, Organ, and Synth sections can sound independently. There are two Panels – A and B – each of which provides a separate configuration of the three sections within a single Program. Panels can be played independently, with one of the panels being controlled via an external MIDI keyboard controller, or they can be layered together, allowing for a maximum of 6 part multitimbral. Most of the buttons and knobs on the Stage, such as volume, instrument selection, drawbar levels (for organ) or filter controls (for synthesizer) can also be adjusted by the external keyboard.[20]

The left hand side of a Nord Stage 88, showing the custom pitch stick and ceramic wheel controller

The Nord Stage includes a spring-mounted wooden pitch stick, and a ceramic mod wheel, similar to the Nord Lead and Nord Modular synthesizers.[12]

Many of the parameter knobs are simple potentiometers, however there are several 360-degree lighted rotary encoders. These rotary encoders control parameters that can be "morphed". Morph Grouping is Clavia's technology that allows users to assign multiple parameters to one control, such as the mod wheel, a control pedal, or aftertouch.[21]

The connectors at the back of the Stage allow the connection of a sustain pedal, a swell pedal for organ, a footswitch to select the rotary speaker emulation speed, and a control pedal to modify effects such as wah-wah. A set of screw-in legs are an available option for the 88 and 76 note models[22] and a custom designed soft case is also available from Clavia.[23] A third party company, Ocean Beach Digital, has manufactured a set of MIDI controlled drawbars for the Nord Stage, for users who prefer to use real drawbars instead of the buttons provided as standard.[24]