The Nord Grand is the latest digital piano from leading Swedish keyboard manufacturer Clavia DMI. The Nord product range is known both for its exceptional quality and for the bright red cases that house its instruments.
The Nord Grand digital piano with elegant metal stand
With the Nord Grand, Clavia has focussed their attention on the keyboard. It is the first Nord stage piano to assign three sensors to each note. And these meticulously track the movement of the hammers rather than keys. This, according to Clavia, results in the smooth dynamic touch of an acoustic grand piano.
The Nord Grand actually uses Kawai’s 88-note Responsive Hammer keybed, with Ivory Touch keytops for a more realistic feel. This system was developed specifically to emulate the touch and response of a grand piano, and is a completely spring-less assembly.
User Interfacing
A triple pedalboard compliments the keyboard. This features Soft and Sostenuto pedals, and a unique Dynamic Sustain. Pedal Noise, which simulates the sounds of an acoustic’s damper mechanism, can also be applied.
When playing live, direct access to various functions is essential. Fiddly menus are a “no-no”. The Nord Grand provides discrete controls for all the essential functions. It also provides seamless transitions when making program and performance set-up changes.
The Nord Grand’s control panel
String Resonance is to be found on better digital pianos, and of course it features here. In simple terms, sample-based instruments play a separate sample for each note. But the strings of an acoustic piano aren’t isolated—they interact with one another. And this is what the String Resonance feature recreates.
Close-up of the Nord Grand’s OLED display and associated controls
The Nord Grand takes full advantage of the excellent Nord Piano Library with its comprehensive range of grand, upright, electric and digital pianos. The instrument is factory-loaded with 10 Grands, 9 Uprights, 10 Electrics, as well as Clavinet and other digital pianos from the library. All banks can be replaced with other pianos as required.
Key Features
- 2 GB Memory for Nord Piano Library
- OLED Display
- 120 voice polyphony
- 7 split points with crossfades and layering
- Creative Piano Filters
- Advanced String Resonance
- Nord Triple Pedal with Dynamic Pedal Noise.
- Keyboard touch: 3 dynamic curves (Light to Heavy)
- Soft Release.
As is the way with digital stage pianos, other sounds are usually included. The Grand Piano has a Sample Synth section with 512 MB of memory available for sounds from the Nord Sample Libray. Key parameters (e.g. envelope) can again be modified directly from the instruments control panel.
The new Nord Piano Monitors (announced earlier this year) can be connected directly to the Nord Grand for optimum nearfield listening.
Availability: Spring 2019
Price: top be confirmed
More Information: Nord Keyboards
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