The Nord Wave is a 49-key polyphonic synthesiser developed by Clavia

Clavia

Clavia Digital Musical Instruments is a Swedish manufacturer of virtual analog synthesizers, virtual electromechanical pianos and stage pianos, founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 1983 by Hans Nordelius and Mikael Carlsson.-The Company:...

. It is part of the growing market of keyboards whose functionality fuses analog, FM, and digital synthesis engines together into one package. Other keyboards of this type include the Nord Stage (albeit to a lesser degree) and the Roland JD-800

Roland JD-800

The JD-800 was a digital synthesizer released by Roland in 1991. The synthesizer featured many knobs and sliders for patch editing and performance control - features which some manufacturers, including Roland, had been omitting in the name of 'streamlining' since the inception of Yamaha's DX-7...

.

Sound Generation

The Wave has two oscillators, each with six different sound banks. Five of these banks are common to both; these are the three analog waveforms provided (sawtooth, triangular and square), as well as noise generation and FM synthesis (with many different algorithms provided). Oscillator One's unique bank is a wavetable bank, with a sample-playback bank being unique to Oscillator Two (the latter of which is full of Mellotron

Mellotron

The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...

tapesets, amongst other things).

Performance Control

There is an extensive, comprehensive user interface on this keyboard, with plenty of dials and switches at one's fingertips. Shown below is a list of these features.

• Polyphony Selection (Poly/Mono/Legato) with Glide control.
• Routable Vibrato.
• Octave Shifter, Pitch Bend and Modulation Wheel.
• Live Patches (Two Slots).
• Modulation Envelope.
• Two routable LFO's (with five waveforms).
• Oscillator Mixer, Osc 2 Detune and Pitch Shift.
• Variable keyboard tracking.
• Amplitude and Filter Envelopes (both with ASDR configuration).
• Variable (Cut-off and Resonance) filter (with six types of filter).
• Two-band EQ.
• Four effects engines (Chorus, Drive, Reverb and Delay).