Nord User Forum

[AllanH]

just noticed that the piano 5 user manual is available on the nord website. ( under downloads).

I'll leave it to others more experienced than me (probably stage owners) to explore and comment upon.

I'm keen to purchase the 73 key version to replace my piano 3. (mainly for weight/and will fit across the back seat) It may be October before it is available here in Australia.

cheers,
Allan

[maurus]

Thanks for pointing to the user manual of the NP5. After a quick look a question to all Nord experts: Do you think it will be possible to play one of the piano engines from an external keyboard while playing the other from the NP5?

On my Electro this is done with a EXTERNAL KBD TO LO option in the Split modes, but the new user manual does not mention this... am I missing something?

[FZiegler]

It seems that the Piano 5 with its 4 sound engines is controlled via one single MIDI channel. The only option you have is to set local control to on or off. Which means that there are only two possibilities to play the NP5 from another keyboard:
a) play all engines from extern;
b) play all engines from extern and the built-in keyboard at the same time or in turn.

No further capabilities. It's still a digital piano for stage use, not what some consider an advanced form of stage piano (-> Electro, Stage). With limited capabilities on the controller keyboard side, too.

BTW, the first reviews are out, too. Which seem to appreciate the 'piano' capabilities of the instrument.

[maurus]

Hm.

If true, my interest in the NP 5 has decreased by quite a bit.

[maxpiano]

Well yes, I hope they will improve the MIDI capabilities of NP5, even if it is not in the "NP family tradition" to have much flexibility in that respect, but having 2x2 engines makes NP5 a different ball game.

PS: AllanH <-> Hlaalu ... (almost) an anagram?

[maurus]

Well yes, I hope they will improve the MIDI capabilities of NP5, even if it is not in the "NP family tradition" to have much flexibility in that respect, but having 2x2 engines makes NP5 a different ball game.

Precisely.

When the Electro series made this step (from one to several engines, from Electro 4 to 5), MIDI capability was adapted as well.
I have a faint hope that the manual is the problem, not the instrument, and that there is a suitable KB Split option, not yet mentioned in the manual. But hope dies last, as they say...

[weremole]

I was already bummed by the stage 3's lack of instrument MIDI but this is even more lackluster. The entire keyboard transmits/receives on 1 channel?

Neither of the new keyboards seem to have the option to assign an instrument to no key section at all either

Too bad since the rest seems so promising. Ive been looking for a 73 keyboard with proper action for a while and the piano 5 appears to tick all the boxes.

I dont know why theyve thrown all the MIDI capability out of the window. I thought people are in need of it more and more with the rising use of VI hosts/DAWs nowadays. Both my old lead 2x and stage 1 EX work perfectly with it.

[cphollis]

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment? If you think about the target buyer for a Nord Piano (instead of a Stage, MODX, et. al.) it is someone who craves a piano-centric experience. So you put your R&D to make that experience the best possible before you invest in things that may not be core to the mission at hand.

One of the things that I've learned about Nord over the years is that they definitely have a target user in mind for each of their products. I'm not a Nord Wave guy, for example.

I don't expect much midi functionality out of my NP4, since I never intended to drive it externally anyway, or at least drive it in a sophisticated manner. The most I've done with it is use it straight midi out and send it external program changes. A second piano engine wouldn't change how I'd use it.

[weremole]

That is a fair point. Ive saw some posts related to this issue that speculated it might have been related to the splitpoint fade or the seamless transitions and that they had to give up the old midi implementation to accomodate the new features.

Then again I dont think these are complicated MIDI features - Nord obviously has implemented it on their old keyboards. I still think its unfortunate that midi instruments were present in the stage and stage 2 and then got left out along rhe qay. The new piano architecture obviously resembles that of the stage.if the stages 3 panel A and B are on a different channrl then it almost seems like another step JUST to have it talk on just a single channel. Its definitely holding me back upgrading to their new flagships considering that I can no longer do trivial stuff on the stage 3 that I can do on my vanilla EX like play synth B on my upper keyboard without having to give up entire panel B.

Same for the keyzones - it can already be assigned to zone 1 or zone 2 or both. How hard can it be to receive on no zone? This was there on the previous stages - why leave it out?

I could understand if they were new and advanced features but to me they seem very basic things a modern keyboard should do.