Music & Audio

Nord Lead - Pelle's Mode

The NordLead 1 and 2 have a secret mode that is way more gnarly than a normal Nord. It has all the fury and rage that some people feel is missing from this brand of synthesizers.

A word of warning: Before entering this mode, remove any headphones and turn down your volume. This mode is always very loud!

First you have to enter Pelle's year of birth: 1965. Set Slot A to Program 19 and Slot B to Program 65. Only the numbers will do, so never mind if memory location 19 is holding another Program than the factory preset. Then press and hold the Portamento Auto button, after which you press and hold the Shift button (what else). Holding both press the Velocity/Morph button and release it again. Still holding the two first knobs press the Performance button and you will hear a click, which means the Pelle mode is active.

Master Level and Program Gain are not active anymore, please use of a mixing desk which is essential to control the volume. All users of the NordLead2X and the NordRack2X will find out there is no Pelle's mode in their machine. The particular part in code used by the operating system is not ported into this latest version. Only the first, NordLead and NordRack, and the second version, NordLead2 and NordRack2, have this feature.

The Pelle mode is a kind of special manual mode, that's probably why that particular button is used.

One will notice all buttons are frozen, except Portamento Auto, which is the door out to the Program mode. Using a Lead (the keyboard) one will find out only the left half of the keyboard controls the sound, where the upper half can be used to mute the synth, although some settings produce sound in the upper half too. The Output is in plain mono; no Unison is possible. To create a stereo sound you will have to use a second NordLead.

Some knobs are completely dead to the sound, where others will result in dramatic changes. In the next ProgramSheet the 'hot' knobs are red, where the black ones are completely useless.

I have posted this here because the original page has gone away.

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