Nord User Forum

[baekgaard]

Whoop, I'm impressed, thanks a lot, do you have it in PDFs file or in the original,format so, I could print it?

Sure, the link is here.

As mentioned, there may easily be errors in it, so any corrections/fixes are more than welcome!

[anotherscott]

I am SO confused now. Could someone put together some sort of video tutorial or something to help me understand the options under 1.24?

It may be worth nothing that the options under 1.24 are the same as they were before 1.24 (i.e. in 1.22, 1.14, and 1.12), except that one option has been removed.

AFAIK, Panel MIDI has worked the same way for every version of the NS3, NS2EX, and NS2 (and maybe even older). The variable has been Dual KB mode, which originally allowed a second keyboard to control a panel (with slightly different functionality than what you could achieve using Panel MIDI). That's how it was with NS2, NS2EX, and early NS3. Then they introduced a new Dual KB option in 1.12 that allowed that mode to control just a single engine instead of an entire panel. Then in 1.24 they made that the only option and took out the older function.

I guess my point is, things aren't more complicated now, things are just different for people who used Dual KB mode in its earlier design.

So to answer the question more directly: Under 1.24, Panel MIDI is the same as it's been for years. Dual KB now allows you to take ONE engine from panel B and have it play exclusively from a second attached keyboard, leaving the other 5 engines playing from the internal keyboard. There are no other options for Dual KB mode.

At least that's my understanding. If you need more than that to "understand the options under 1.24", can you be more specific, i.e. the options for doing what?

[Jonnie Cache]

I am SO confused now. Could someone put together some sort of video tutorial or something to help me understand the options under 1.24?

It may be worth nothing that the options under 1.24 are the same as they were before 1.24 (i.e. in 1.22, 1.14, and 1.12), except that one option has been removed.

AFAIK, Panel MIDI has worked the same way for every version of the NS3, NS2EX, and NS2 (and maybe even older). The variable has been Dual KB mode, which originally allowed a second keyboard to control a panel (with slightly different functionality than what you could achieve using Panel MIDI). That's how it was with NS2, NS2EX, and early NS3. Then they introduced a new Dual KB option in 1.12 that allowed that mode to control just a single engine instead of an entire panel. Then in 1.24 they made that the only option and took out the older function.

I guess my point is, things aren't more complicated now, things are just different for people who used Dual KB mode in its earlier design.

So to answer the question more directly: Under 1.24, Panel MIDI is the same as it's been for years. Dual KB now allows you to take ONE engine from panel B and have it play exclusively from a second attached keyboard, leaving the other 5 engines playing from the internal keyboard. There are no other options for Dual KB mode.

At least that's my understanding. If you need more than that to "understand the options under 1.24", can you be more specific, i.e. the options for doing what?

That helps a lot between this and the chart above. I'm new to Nord so I don't have any point of reference for older implementations. The whole MIDI panel vs Dual KB was confusing to me. I think I understand it now. I was using DualKB, so I'll have to rethink some things.

[anotherscott]

Picking up from what I was saying in another thread, the key function that was lost in removing Dual KB's panel mode (leaving the MIDI Panel function as the only way to control Panel B from a second keyboard) is that you can no longer operate the panel B controls without playing panel B locally from the Nord's own keys.

The workarounds discussed for that are either manually silencing the output of Panel B while you're tweaking it (by assigning Panel B to alternate outputs and using mixer faders or putting a volume pedal between that output and your amp/mixer OR possibly by using an expression pedal attached to your external keyboard)*; or if your second keyboard has its own assignable knobs/sliders/buttons, using those to give you the real-time Panel B tweaking that you need.

Apart from that "silent tweaking" ability, there was almost no difference between Dual KB and triggering the second panel via MIDI. Then they added the "engine option" to Dual KB mode, which allowed it to do some other things that Panel MIDI did not permit (but a function that overlaps with the old NS2 option of being able to assign different MIDI channels to the different engines, something they removed on the NS3)... and now that's the only way Dual KB works.

So here's how I'd summarize the differences in what you can do with an attached keyboard...

Use 2nd keyboard to trigger Panel B?
NS2/2EX: Yes, MIDI Panel feature OR Dual KB feature
NS3 pre 1.2.4: Yes, MIDI Panel feature OR Dual KB feature
NS3 as of 1.2.4: Yes, MIDI Panel feature

Use 2nd keyboard to trigger Panel B while tweaking Panel B settings on the Nord itself, without playing Panel B from the Nord?
NS2/2EX: Yes, Dual KB feature
NS3 pre 1.2.4: Yes, Dual KB feature
EDITED ANSWER NS3 as of 1.2.4: Yes with Dual KB feature if Panel B has only one sound assigned to it (piano, organ, or synth); but if Panel B is set to play more than one sound, that changes the answer to No... but as a workaround, you can use MIDI Panel feature and manually cut the volume of Panel B while tweaking to generally accomplish this*

Use 2nd keyboard to trigger just one instrument (i.e. just piano or just organ, even if no panel consists of nothing but that instrument)
NS2/2EX: Yes, Instrument MIDI feature, global to both panels (slots)
NS3 pre 1.2.4: No
NS3 as of 1.2.4: Yes, Dual KB mode, specific to one panel
(In all cases, if a panel/slot consists of just one instrument anyway, you can trigger that using Panel MIDI)



Other notes:
... For the various scenarios, there may also be differences to consider in how each Panel reacts to controllers, i.e. the pedals
... Another consideration is that Panel MIDI is a global setting whereas Dual KB is a Program setting and can easily be adjusted on the fly from the front panel. I had been hoping that a program-specific Dual KB function would over-ride the global Panel MIDI function if both were assigned to the same MIDI channel, but based on what baekgaard said above, that does not appear to be the case. Assuming they don't implement that, then it would be advantageous to be using a 2nd keyboard which, itself, provides a very easy way to change MIDI transmit channels on the fly, so you could easily switch between using the 2nd keyboard to play the entire second panel vs. using it to play only one engine of the second panel. (BTW, this is not a new NS3-specific limitation. On the NS2/2EX, Instrument MIDI and Panel MIDI were both global parameters, so you similarly had limitations on which uses of an attached keyboard could easily be changed on the fly.)


* One limitation of manually silencing Panel B while tweaking it is that the notes are still being triggered, you just can't hear them. This means that, if your Panel B sound has a long decay, when you're actually ready to play the sound you've tweaked (which would involve turning Panel B off on the front panel and then bringing up the volume of Panel B with a pedal or on your mixer), you may still hear the tail end of the Panel B sounds that were triggered by the Nord's own keys before you switched the internal keys to Panel A only.

[stringtapper]

I'm still on OS v1.22 and I think I'm going to wait to see what they do before I update.

I use Dual KB mode the way it is in 1.22 quite a bit and this change sounds like it would royally mess up my current setup. I'll at least have to wait until I better understand what I would need to change in my setup to compensate for the change.

[anotherscott]

And who knows, maybe they'll add that functionality back in 1.25.

[derrellpiper]

It seems to me, again speaking as a software engineer not a musician, that sometimes bug fixes have untold ramifications that you just did not expect. The beauty of these synthesizers, which some of you are not liking, is that they're half software. Features can be added and removed, after the fact, in firmware. The matrix baekgaard posted was extremely complex and if I were the software engineer in charge of getting all that right, it might take a couple of releases before that happened. I still think it's absurd that anyone would buy a $5,000 instrument sight unseen, like some of us did, and not expect there to be some issues. As I have said before, please file official bug reports with Clavia. You're just preaching to the choir in here. Even if you don't think they read them, they probably do.

[analogika]

They’ve explicitly referenced this forum in one of the latest firmware release notes. They certainly read them, and they read this place.

[derrellpiper]

I don't doubt they do, its fun in here and we talk about Nord things all day long...

[GeeDeWee]

I'm quite confused reading all these posts.

Currently I use a NS288 and a second keyboard to trigger the panel A and B organ and synth. I assigned a MIDI channel to those 'instruments' and double tap the section button a few times so that the section is 'on' but the LO, UP, HI leds are off. That way the organ or synth is not triggered by the NS2 keyboard, but only by the second keyboard. The setting is saved within a program. I do not use the NS2 DualKB mode.

I'm aware that assigning a specific MIDI channel to a specific instrument is no longer possible on the NS3.
But if I would upgrade to a NS3, can I achieve the same result as with my NS2 in any way?