Nord User Forum

[NordRita]

I do not (yet) own a Nord. I am researching since they are so expensive. When I read about layering for the Electro 5 HP, I cannot tell what the limitations are, if any. It looks to me like perhaps you can only layer certain patches? Also, I am curious if there are any sustain pedal issues with certain features. I ask this because with a Roland organ I used to have, there were limitations on using a sustain pedal that were very annoying.
THANK YOU

[anotherscott]

The main limitation is, when you layer two sounds, one of the two sounds must be either an organ or a piano (piano includes related instruments like electric piano and clavinet). You can easily turn sustain pedal function on for either one of the sounds (or both, or neither).

[NordRita]

Thank you very much.

[Blazerunner]

I just brought a Nord I find it to be the most limiting Keyboard I've ever owned in my life. Costs a lot and sounds good but can't do nearly half the stuff other keyboards do. You can only layer 2 sounds and they can only be 2 sounds from different sound arenas. The Nord is basically broken up into 3 Sound Arenas, Organs,Piano's and Synths. Synths might as well as be called "General Sounds" because it's everything else that isn't a Piano or Organ. You can pick sounds from any of these sets to layer. At least for me the only layering I like to do on Piano's and Organs is to double them up with other Piano's and Organs the one thing the Electro 5 can't do. I'm dying to make a "Grand Wurlitzer".

[anotherscott]

I just brought a Nord I find it to be the most limiting Keyboard I've ever owned in my life. Costs a lot and sounds good but can't do nearly half the stuff other keyboards do.

The key is just to know whether a board does what you need before you buy it. People pay more for a Minimoog, and it can only play one note at a time. My acoustic piano only has one sound. You can buy other clonewheel organs that have no additional sounds. These are not flaws. They are designed to do one thing, and do it well.

[ericL]

I just brought a Nord I find it to be the most limiting Keyboard I've ever owned in my life. Costs a lot and sounds good but can't do nearly half the stuff other keyboards do. You can only layer 2 sounds and they can only be 2 sounds from different sound arenas. The Nord is basically broken up into 3 Sound Arenas, Organs,Piano's and Synths. Synths might as well as be called "General Sounds" because it's everything else that isn't a Piano or Organ. You can pick sounds from any of these sets to layer. At least for me the only layering I like to do on Piano's and Organs is to double them up with other Piano's and Organs the one thing the Electro 5 can't do. I'm dying to make a "Grand Wurlitzer".

You can layer pianos or organs if you load up a piano or organ sample into the Synth. I used the NE5 for a bit and had a great layered piano sound I made this way, with different octaves selected for each sound.

[Blazerunner]

I just brought a Nord I find it to be the most limiting Keyboard I've ever owned in my life. Costs a lot and sounds good but can't do nearly half the stuff other keyboards do.

The key is just to know whether a board does what you need before you buy it. People pay more for a Minimoog, and it can only play one note at a time. My acoustic piano only has one sound. You can buy other clonewheel organs that have no additional sounds. These are not flaws. They are designed to do one thing, and do it well.

I have a lot of synths they all serve their purposes but for the price Nord should be capable of doing more in this day in age. Wouldn't hurt to have more gigs so you can enjoy their sound banks more since their files are so huge and it wouldn't hurt to have more advanced layering features to get more out the board or to have a pitch bend and modulation wheel. It's a very limited and "expensive" keyboard for all the features you don't get. Just imagine how much more use you could get out of it if you could layer it the way you wanted and store even more sounds on it. I'm just not giving Nord a free pass on that they need to step their game up it's 2018 and the competition for piano's is deeper than ever. People expect more out of a keyboard now and that's something Nord really needs to meet the demands of especially with things like Keyscape & Kompact out there. As soon as the stage presence of VST's start getting more solid/reliable it's going to be harder to defend boards with limitations like the Nord. I mean it's a nice keyboard but it only has a few Piano's and Organs even with the online library. Sample to Sample this thing would drown in the Piano/Organ Sound menu on a Kronos or Montage. 1GB for Pianos and on good day you can get about 27-28 sounds in on that? why not give us 2GB so we can get all the XL files we want and make the most out of the limited piano selections?

Not to mention they as well as need to improve that very dated sound manager it reminds me of the old MPC 2000XL software people used to try to make to swap and manage samples. Like for instance if the gigs are limited give your users the option of loading up sounds with a Memory Stick at least that way they don't have to run to a computer to swap out sets. If the MOXF can do it for $1,100 - $1,600 the Nord should be able to do it too and that MOXF has about 1gig worth of samples it can load up and hold. Even if they put on a dead bank just so that you could store and hold sounds in and swap over when needed that would be cool too. Not having those features just creates more work for the end user looking for "Get around" solutions. You should never have to sacrifice sounds or quality levels just to get the most out of your keyboard.

As for me being a Keyboardist I don't care much for the physical Keyboard aspect of the Nord at all it's just not much of a keyboard it's design is extremely outdated. I can't help but look at the blank voids of red space at the top and think "hmm a pitch bend or mod wheel would be perfect right here." The biggest reason why other people don't buy nords aside from it's price is that you can't tweak & modify the sounds like you can on every other keyboard in existence. Everything is "As is" so that's a deal breaker for people that like to customize their sounds (yes you could add external guitar pedals or filters but that's another story) but people don't want stock sounds. The fun of playing a keyboard is getting in your custom tweaks and spins to make people say "Hey what's that?". But like I said every piece of gear has its place and sound wise though Nord has some excellent warm sounding samples and interesting libraries that's the biggest pro of it to me and of course being able to access the sound library for more sounds I like that. Despite what it lacks it has a charm to it which makes playing it fun but I can't pretend like it would kill Nord to give the Electro some upgraded features to make the playing experience more enjoyable because it's not a cheap Keyboard. You shouldn't have to spend 3-4K for a Stage 3 just to get basic keyboard features. Even Korg managed to engineer a pitch bend/Rotary Speed switch on the new Connie and that's less than the Electro. So what's up with Nord? Why so stingy with the features?

[anotherscott]

I have a lot of synths they all serve their purposes but for the price Nord should be capable of doing more in this day in age.

What must you think about a $3500 Minimoog!

It does what it does. If it does what you need, it's great. If it doesn't, why complain? Just buy something else.

wouldn't hurt to have more advanced layering features to get more out the board or to have a pitch bend and modulation wheel....Just imagine how much more use you could get out of it if you could layer it the way you wanted

If that's what you need, buy a Nord Stage 3. Or if you want to stay in the Electro budget, buy a Yamaha, Kurzweil, Korg, Roland, whatever... and you'll get the things you want, but you won't get some other things the Electro has.

I'm just not giving Nord a free pass on that they need to step their game up it's 2018 and the competition for piano's is deeper than ever. People expect more out of a keyboard now and that's something Nord really needs to meet the demands of

I think you'd have a stronger point there if Nords weren't selling, and they were being beaten up by their competitors. But if you look at sites like Sweetwater and Musician's Friends and sort digital pianos by best-selling/most popular, the Electro comes up pretty high.

As soon as the stage presence of VST's start getting more solid/reliable it's going to be harder to defend boards with limitations like the Nord.

Many people use laptops now. They have their pros and cons. They are already pretty reliable, and Macs in particular seem pretty hassle-free. I'm not sure what additional reliability you're looking for, and when you expect to be able to achieve it.Regardless, I'm sure the Electro 5 will not be the last Electro and I would not be surprised to see some enhancements this year or next.

Sample to Sample this thing would drown in the Piano/Organ Sound menu on a Kronos or Montage.

Kronos piano samples are much bigger, yet many people think the Nord pianos sound better. Most people think Nord organs sound better than Kronos, and certainly much better than Montage. You also can't get a 7x-key Kronos or Montage for as little money as a 7x-key Electro, and they weigh much more besides. Simply, there's a lot of desirable things you can get in a $2500, $3000 or $3500 board, but you can't get all of them in the same $2500, $3000 or $3500 board.

give your users the option of loading up sounds with a Memory Stick at least that way they don't have to run to a computer to swap out sets.

Electro lets you store 400 programs, how many more than that do you need to get through a gig? If you mean swap out different sample sets, you're not going to do that at a gig anyway (it takes too long), so why not use the computer? Since you won't be doing it at a gig, there's no great advantage to doing it from a memory stick, and they'd have to add a whole file management program to the board itself to manage it, which would be more complicated on the little screen than what you can do on a computer. I can't imagine very many people wanting to do that.

If the MOXF can do it for $1,100 - $1,600 the Nord should be able to do it too and that MOXF has about 1gig worth of samples it can load up and hold.

You have to pay $375 more to be able to load the 1 gig of samples. But yes, Yamaha lets you load in sample data from a USB stick, and it's a good example of what I was talking about in the previous paragraph. File management is such a bear that you're a masochist if you don't choose to use the computer to manage your sample data instead (i.e. John Melas' Waveform Editor)... and unlike Nord, you have to pay extra for this. (And again, you'd never do it at a gig, because it takes forever, same technology limitations as Nord.)
The MOXF is a great board, it does a lot of things better than a Nord does. But it doesn't give you anything remotely like the Electro's organ, or the hands-on instant effect tweakability, or the wide range of entirely different piano sounds. (There are a few free ones from Yamaha you can download, but not nearly Nord's variety; there are others you can download and install from third-parties, but that can quickly run into hundreds of dollars additional.) Basically, if you want all the functionality of a MOXF and an Electro, the answer is to buy a MOXF and an Electro. Again, you can get a lot in each company's $2,000 boards, but you can't get every feature from each of them in the same $2,00 board. Even if such a board with all those features existed, it wouldn't be a $2,000 board anymore.

You should never have to sacrifice sounds or quality levels just to get the most out of your keyboard.

There are really two basic approaches a keyboard manufacturer can make: Don't offer expanded capabilities; or offer a bunch and let the user choose what s/he wants. You're penalizing Nord for offering options to increase its capabilities. Roland similarly offers a lot of expansions for some of their boards, but you can't load all of them at once. And that 1 GB MOXF board can't load all the available samples you can load into that machine, either. Heck, even with a laptop and VSTs, you have to balance which combination of things you can do simultaneously.

The biggest reason why other people don't buy nords aside from it's price is that you can't tweak & modify the sounds like you can on every other keyboard in existence.

But lots of people DO buy Nords. And while some boards are much more tweakabale, there are also boards that are not... or are very tweakable, but so complicated that few people ever bother. (I remember reading about how some large percentage of workstations brought in for service turn out to have only the factory presets in them!)

Even Korg managed to engineer a pitch bend/Rotary Speed switch on the new Connie and that's less than the Electro. So what's up with Nord? Why so stingy with the features?

but also look at how many Nord features are not in the Continental, like the ability to split two sounds, or load your own samples, or store more than 16 of your own presets (compared to 400 on the Nord). Looked at that way, everyone is stingy, just differently.

[Arjan P]

For me it's very simple: for tweaking sounds and creating freaky stuff, I use VSTis and my Roli Seaboard Rise. For playing most pianos, organ, farfisa, vox, electric pianos and many samples (mellotron for instance) I use the Electro. The emphasis is on playing here - and that's how the Electro was presented by Clavia.

[NordRita]

I am surprised at how expensive these are, but I suppose the market supports it.