Nord User Forum

The Nord C2 includes a special coupler that adds the pedal to the leftmost note played on the Great manual. Can this feature be added to the Nord Stage 3?

56unclejohn wrote:The Nord C2 includes a special coupler that adds the pedal to the leftmost note played on the Great manual. Can this feature be added to the Nord Stage 3?

Hi and welcome to NUF, this is a user community not affiliated with Clavia, so no one here can respond for Nord about which feature can/will be added to their products or not.

Consider anyway that the Nord Stage 3 Organ has no specific B3 Bass pedal part so it cannot have exactly that feature just because of that

Otoh on NS3 you can use the Synth section to generate an organ bass pedal sound (if you are using already both Organ sections for lower and upper manuals) and if you set it as Mono and limit to a lower zone, it will play the last note pressed of that zone (not exactly the same behaviour you are asking for, but the closest you can get; forcing the Synth to the leftmost note played would require some external MIDI processing/scripting)

Thanks for your helpful reply,
"forcing the Synth to the leftmost note played" and "external MIDI processing/scripting" sounds like it might be one way to go. However, using MIDI and DAW seems like using a sledgehammer to crack open a nut.
I was thinking more along the lines of an add-on after-market hardware module that would detect the leftmost key pressed and output the appropriate MIDI signal.
I just find it amazing that no one in this large forum seems to have posted on this feature since it was standard in organs manufactured more than twenty years ago.
However, every manufacturer seems to have a different term for it. For example, Peterson Electro-Musical Products Inc. calls it a bass note coupler (http://www.petersonemp.com/ics4000/), Johannus calls it a Manual Bass (MB) coupler and Roland calls it a "To Lower" button on the Atelier AT90. So maybe it has been mentioned before using a different terminology and so I haven't been able to find it yet.

You shouldn't be surprised that no one asked for it on the Nord Stage, because it is a feature that is peculiar of organ clones (mainly dual manual and not all of them have it btw), which is not the target of the NS (organ is just a section of a stage piano keyboard there) as it is instead for the C2 (dual manual organ).

I think it's even not so much a feature for organ clones (which mimic Hammond B3s or the like) but a playing aid for genuine organs. None of the cloned organ models on the Nord had it, so ...

As far as the synth section of the Stage 3 is concerned, there is no way to get a monophonic voice of the leftmost note. You'll get only the last played note, and the feature is more made to play the uppermost note. Only the Stage 4 gives the choice for monophonic voices to play the uppermost or the leftmost note (as far as I know).

There is a way to manipulate notes through MIDI: connect MIDI out to MIDI in and place some MIDI converter in between (I'm just not sure which of the MIDI controllers would be able to do what you want) and select one of the two organ engines to only play incoming notes (no active local keyboard range). In theory, that should do the trick (there seem to be issues on the newer NS4, though).

56unclejohn wrote: However, every manufacturer seems to have a different term for it. For example, Peterson Electro-Musical Products Inc. calls it a bass note coupler (http://www.petersonemp.com/ics4000/), Johannus calls it a Manual Bass (MB) coupler and Roland calls it a "To Lower" button on the Atelier AT90. So maybe it has been mentioned before using a different terminology and so I haven't been able to find it yet.

Just for the sake of accuracy, "pedal to lower" as a coupler function doesn't necessarily mean that only the left most note is played as bass, only that the tonewheels responsible for pedal sounds will be heard when pressing the lower manual keys, usually the first two octaves or so. How the bass notes are elaborated internally (mono/poly, leftmost/last played) is yet another setting in itself.

By the way as FZiegler says, some pipe organs have this function, along with other coupling possibilities, but no vintage Hammonds had this as far as I am aware.

Anyway as maxpiano says it's no surprise that you don't find this on the Stage as it's not really a clonewheel, even the C2D has been discontinued and Nord doesn't seem to be focussed on the organ part of their keyboard in recent years.

FZiegler wrote:I think it's even not so much a feature for organ clones (which mimic Hammond B3s or the like) but a playing aid for genuine organs. None of the cloned organ models on the Nord had it, so ...

As far as the synth section of the Stage 3 is concerned, there is no way to get a monophonic voice of the leftmost note. You'll get only the last played note, and the feature is more made to play the uppermost note. Only the Stage 4 gives the choice for monophonic voices to play the uppermost or the leftmost note (as far as I know).

There is a way to manipulate notes through MIDI: connect MIDI out to MIDI in and place some MIDI converter in between (I'm just not sure which of the MIDI controllers would be able to do what you want) and select one of the two organ engines to only play incoming notes (no active local keyboard range). In theory, that should do the trick (there seem to be issues on the newer NS4, though).

I had thought of the setup you suggested and it's reassuring to hear someone else explain the same idea. I only became aware Nord instruments existed a couple of months ago, so I think I should really focus on what the Nord Stage 3 can do before trying to compare it with my limited pipe organ experience.

That said I've just watched this explanation of layers. Splits and Panels:

I can see that the octave shift feature applied to an organ limited to the left zones of panel B would come close to the same effect as the Bass Note Coupler (but with extra notes). This is not exactly the same effect but on the other hand, why should it have to be exactly the same? For example, no one has explained to our pastor that the authentic clicking sounds of the B3 are "cool" (or "wicked") and he doesn't like them.

56unclejohn wrote:For example, no one has explained to our pastor that the authentic clicking sounds of the B3 are "cool" (or "wicked") and he doesn't like them.

He thinks the same as Laurens Hammond then!