Review on Same Day Music by Matt Addison

I have been making music for over a decade and have bought instruments, gear, etc from all over. I was looking to buy a synth that would be easy to carry around but also fun and quality work. The Nord Lead 3 fit the bill perfectly! It's small enough to go in my backpack so I can take it anywhere. Plus, the sounds are amazing even though it only has 25 keys.

Nord really did their homework when they made this machine because it is very user friendly which makes producing songs on the fly super easy. With an array of analog modeled filters, 26 waveforms (instruments), 4 effects slots (on each layer - 2 mono 1 stereo) you could make some magnificent symphonic trancecore with helium vocals and chiptune drums within minutes!



The presets are great but the real fun comes from tweaking them to your liking. The knobs feel very sturdy and responsive. There's a knob for everything so you won't need any other controls if you don't want to.

I recommend programming a sequence with separate tracks for each Control Change message so every change is discrete and making sure your DAW sends Control Change messages on all channels (if it doesn't already). This way, you can use all 4 effects slots per layer (2 mono 1 stereo) as well as control panning, volume etc.



To summarize: This synth is really deep and adds tremendous power to my studio. It's fully programmable which let me configure it to work with my other gear. Now, I can fully control and automate everything in Ableton Live which has changed the way I compose for the better.