Nord User Forum

[Arieelius]

Hi All,
Here's what I'm trying to do;

I have (2) boards an Electro 5 and a Kawai VPC1. I have the Kawai midi'd out to the Nord's midi in to play the Nord patches as the uper keyboard split. I'd like to use my ipad with band helper to change patches on the master nord but the midi in port is being used by the Kawai.

1. Will I be able to send midi patch changes to the kawai's Midi in port that would be passed through to the nord? The kawai does not have a through midi port.

Is there a better solution as to how to wire these up together? Do I need an irig midi 2 device between the kawai and nord?

thanks for your help & input

[maxpiano]

Simple: you have MIDI over USB too on the NE5, so use the USB to connect the NE5 to the iPad and set Global Channel to any between USB1-16

[Arieelius]

Thanks for the reply maxpiano, I failed to mention that I have both the NE5 and kawai usb/midi'd to my macbook pro running mainstage. I use the NE5 patches 80% of the time but occasionally I'll use a backing track or special patch from mainstage.

Also, I thought I read in these forums that the NE5 only sends MIDI through the USB port and does not receive it?

[maxpiano]

NE5 USB MIDI is absolutely bidirectional, if you have a Mac then you can do another trick: connect the iPad to the Mac via Bluetooth (or Wireless MIDI or Lightning/USB cable using Midimittr) then use an External Instrument channel strip on Mainstage (or a MIDI Routing app such as http://notahat.com/midi_patchbay/) to ruote the iPad data to the NE5.

On the other hand, if you use Maistage, why don't you make it the "MIDI center" and program the NE5 patch changes on it (using the External Channel strip) then use the iPad to switch the Mainstage patches, instead?

[Arieelius]

Thanks, I was reading about the external channel strips in Mainstage last night. It looks like the proper way to route the midi. Thank for the links.

[DanieleP]

Hi Arieelius,
if for some reason you prefer not to be forced to use the macbook, i think you can connect the ipad to vpc1 input and use the input as a midi merge.
you can manage midi ports routing via vpc software editor.

if you do not want to use the i-rig 2 you can use the camera connection kit and a usb-midi cable.
I think you could also use a bluetooth-midi adapter to connect the ipad to VPC1 or any midi keyboard, but i do not know which model to advise you.

p.s. I also want to buy an Electro 5 and a Kawai VPC1. Are you completely satisfied? Can I ask you some information about it?

[pianopop9]

Hey guys. What kind of cable would I need to send program changes to my Nord stage 2 using Bandhelper app on my iPad? I'm seeing a lot of usb camera kits on Amazon saying they will not work to send midi. Please help!! Thx!