Nord Piano


The Nord Piano is a digital piano developed in Sweden, by Clavia. Although the Nord Pianos are sample players that can play any of the sounds in the Nord Sample Library, it is primarily intended as a replacement for the electronic or acoustic piano.

Models

The Nord Piano, released in 2010, has 88 keys with hammer action, an effects section with effects such as reverb and amplifier simulations. It also has some unusual features designed to make the piano sounds more realistic, such a simulation of unplayed strings resonating in sympathy with the played strings, and samples of the pedal noises. Up to 120 programs can be used in 24 banks, with a total of 500MB RAM available for samples.
In 2012 Clavia released the Nord Piano 2. The main differences are that the Nord Piano 2 adds a second section of samples dedicated to playing non-piano samples either layered with the piano sounds or by splitting the keyboard.
At NAMM in 2016 Clavia launched the Nord Piano 3, which includes an improved 88-key keybed and an expanded memory.
The Nord Piano 4 was introduced physically at MusicMesse 2018 and on the web on April 11, 2018 by the manufacturer. to be available for purchase by the summer of 2018. Some of the improvements to the previous model include: 120 voice polyphony, creative piano filters, seamless transitions, 7 split points with optional split point crossfades, a doubled 512 MB memory for the sample synth section, refined organize mode, and a numeric pad mode for direct program access.

Reception

When reviewing the original Nord Piano, Sound on Sound reported that "In the interests of balance, I tried to find something about the NP88 I didn’t like, but had little luck". While the effectiveness of the instrument in Mono Output mode was questioned, the conclusion was "I won’t beat around the bush: I think the Nord Piano is fantastic."