Nord User Forum

[ShiraD]

Hey hey there!
I have a great NE4, but I'm having a problem moving quickly between presets on a very fast song. I need to go back and forth between an organ and a Fender Rhodes. Is there a way to use a foot switch in order to do that? Or maybe you guys have any other tips?

Thanks a bunch

[anotherscott]

It only takes a single button press to switch from an organ sound to a rhodes sound or vice versa, nothing's going to be faster than that... is the issue that you can't spare the hand? Or have you not yet seen how you can make the change with a single button?

[brucie808]

I do something very similar switching between Wurli and Hammond for verses and choruses on a few songs live on an Electro 2. I looked into whether there were any midi pedals, mainly aimed at guitarists, that would allow me to assign program change numbers to separate foots switches.

What I did see was quite pricey so I just decided to practice using the front panel switches on the Nord. What has helped me is thinking of the button press as being like a snare hit on the last beat of the last bar of the verse and then that sets me up nicely to hit the first note of the chorus on the right sound. I suppose that’s the benefits of being a former drummer and current keyboard player!

Cheers

John

[jimmyjames]

A very belated answer to this post... I use a Casio PX 5S with my NE4 and on certain songs I have programmed the sustain pedal connected to the PX 5S to send a MIDI signal to trigger a program change on the NE4. Since you are switching from an organ sound to a Rhodes sound you could actually just use one program and send a MIDI signal to toggle between the Organ and Piano sounds as all the programs in the NE4 are dual sets. You can also use this technique to switch between two organ drawbar settings by creating different upper and lower settings in the same program (split function disabled) and using a sustain pedal triggered MIDI signal to switch between the two. I use this latter approach in a song like Foreplay by Boston where you don't have time to take your hands off the keys to change the drawbars.