Nord User Forum

Hi,
I've just bought the NP88 after years of playing a Clavinova and have some questions about terms used and the program bank.

Firstly I'm not familiar with the terms program and bank. From what I can gather there are 5 programs (sound, pedal etc) and I'm assuming in each of these programs you can have different settings, known as banks. Is this right?

What's also confusing me is why each of the programs is relating to something specific eg sound, pedal. This suggests that one program eg sound has different sound settings/banks, pedal has different settings for pedals etc etc. However, when swapping through the different programs, the instrument also changed. This then suggests that each program has it's own instrument etc settings so what exactly is the difference between the different programs eg sound, pedal etc. If all programs have essentially the same properties why label them with a name rather than just program 1-5? I'm sure I've got it wrong though :-/

Any help greatly appreciated.

Hello snerkler,
Welcome to the forum!
The Nord Piano has 120 programs organized in 24 banks of 5.
The term "program" is kind of a misnomer that has been adopted from the synthesizer industry.
It can best be thought of as a snapshot of all the panel settings such as: type of piano sound, effects, EQ, Acoustics, KBD Touch, transpose...etc. Each program can be completely different.
A "Bank" can be thought of as a folder that holds 5 programs.

Thanks for your reply. I'm still a little confused. What are the 5 'program' buttons at the bottom eg System/midi/Sound/Pedal/Panic? Do each of these hold the 24 banks for which you can set all the parameters for each? If you can change all the parameters in the banks of system, all the parameters in midi etc etc why are they called system/midi etc? As I said in my original post, each of those buttons suggest you change the parameters only of that part, eg if you select pedal I would have expected to only change pedal settings, not all parameters such as instrument, EQ, effect etc. It would be much less confusing to label the buttons 1-5. Am I making any sense?

Also, if you set a bank/program with a set instrument, EQ or effect will these override the EQ and effects settings currently on the EQ/effect or if the EQ/Effect button is lit will these override the bank/program EQ/effect settings?

On the Nord Piano (NP)
The 5 program buttons are dual functioning "hence the name under the button". Their primary function is to activate a program "call up a sound for use".
The program buttons have a secondary function that can be accessed by holding the SHIFT button while hitting a program button "shift function" the shift functions are indicated under each of the 5 program buttons i.e. SHIFT+Program 1 = SYSTEM MENU this is used for changing global system parameters.

The NP programs are structured in 24 banks "or folders" of 5 programs "sounds" each. The different banks can be accessed by using the two buttons at the left of the display "Bank/ menu, Value"

When a program "sound" is activated, it will change every parameter to the value that was saved as part of that program regardless of the current panel value i.e. type of piano sound, effects, EQ, Acoustics, KBD Touch, transpose...etc.

Much greater detail can be found in the NP manual found at this link:
http://www.nordkeyboards.com/downloads/ ... .0x%20(eng).pdf

Cheers, Hanon

Thanks for the explanation again. I've been a right muppet, makes much more sense now I that I realise the buttons are dual function. They are even numbered across the top

Is there a section on here where people have found good settings for their programs/banks that they've been willing to share?

Any finally can you change how much sustain you get from the pedal other than half pressing it? Ie can you change the level of sustain on full press of the pedal?

Cheers

I, too, am a newbie, and this post explained my biggest question at the moment. Thanks.