Nord C1 Sunny

I was watching this and realized that it was a good example of what I love about the twenty-first century.

First, it's a typical amateur clip on YouTube, but I get more pleasure out of watching it than I do out of most big-budget movies that I see. It's a guy in his spare room--you can even see a power outlet and some random mundane household stuff left in view. He's playing a portable keyboard and is accompanied by a machine instead of a real drummer. Not exactly top of the line in terms of expense. But what comes out of all this is a glimpse of someone who, however laid back (note the cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth) has an obvious passion: he does this stuff because he loves it. Sometime in the past he spent a lot of time mastering the Hammond organ, including use of the pedalboard, plus the requisite Leslie speaker. His other YouTube clips include such early sixties standards of the B-3 playlist as "Summertime" and "Georgia on my Mind." So he knows his stuff. Now he's in his home, making his own clips for YouTube.

Second, if I understood correctly, he lives on the Isle of Guernsey in the English Channel. That's about as far off the beaten path as you can get and still be near civilization as the term is generally understood. His talent as it is displayed here is not accessible to most of us under most circumstances--but now we have the Web, and he can set up a little camera in his spare room and let people like us see what he can do.

Third, the keyboard he's playing is a Nord C1, currently considered to be the best of the "clonewheel" keyboards, designed for one purpose: to emulate as closely as possible the sound and experience of playing a Hammond B3 with a Leslie speaker. This keyboard has been on the market only about a year. For quite a while musical instrument makers have been trying to get to this point. I know, because I've owned two earlier attempts, a Hammond-Suzuki XK1 and a Native Instruments B4/B4D. Both were very good, but both had drawbacks (but did have drawbars...sorry, that's an inside joke).

So in short, this clip provides you with an auditory and visual experience replicating one you might have had forty years ago, but it's all done with technology that is nearly brand new.

A friend of mine told me about one of his teachers, a man who knew the history of Western civilization very well, and taught it for many years. Sometimes a student would wistfully say that they wished they'd been born in some beautiful but long-gone era. The teacher was always firm. No, he'd say. Things are better now in so many ways. This is the best time to be alive. He lived to be ninety, and died just five years ago. At an age when some people retreat into memory, he stayed in touch with the present, and never wavered in his belief that, for all its real and tragic flaws, right now is the best time of all.