Clavia Nord Modular G1 2001

Description from: Earboners.com 

... The Nord Modular G1 is a polyphonic, multitimbral digital modular synthesiser and as part of the Nord Modular range, it was significant at the time of it’s manufacture for being a half hardware, half software synth. In a pioneering move, the Nord Modular communicated with software on a computer via a MIDI connection where users could program synth patches which were then played via the hardware instrument.

The Nord Modular was visually a unique synth as well. It had a small and compact keyboard which is normally a divisive factor amongst synth enthusiasts, although in the case of the Modular, it is designed much less as a classic performance synth and much more as an experimental instrument with an endless variety of possibilities. It’s computer software, named the Nord Modular Editor, was a visual representation of a synth’s control panel which showed images of patching between over 100 different modules, allowing users a large variety of creative freedom. Another unique and wide ranging feature of the Modular was its ability to approximate additive, subtractive and FM synthesis, whereas most hardware digital synths only imitated one of these. 

The Nord Modular worked by storing patches in flash RAM, with the maximum being determined not by the number of patches but by their size and complexity. It had four voices which could then be expanded to eight and on to maximum 32 in the patching stage depending on patch complexity due to the Modular’s 4 part multitimbral capacities.

The Nord Modular has 6 VSM oscillators including triangle, sawtooth and pulse waves, and 8 LFOs with four random pattern generators and a total of 16,000 patterns. It has a parametric filter and well as high pass, low pass, and band pass filters, plus shelving EQs, ADSR and AD envelopes, and 9 memory banks with 99 memories in each – giving a total of 891 – as well as a sequencer and MIDI capabilities for all knobs and controls. Although the keyboard is small, it does have octave shift buttons; in addition, it has four assignable audio outputs, two audio inputs, and pedal inputs with on/off function, control, and sustain.

The Nord Modular G1 had its own fair share of effects. Its sequencer had four modules and it came with reverb, chorus, and distortion, although the biggest creative freedom came with the almost unlimited amount of connections it could be patched to create. Ultimately this was a synth where considerable effort would have gone into the design and programming of its software and yet it still managed to create hardware which was flexible, innovative, and high quality.