Nord User Forum

I am very curious how other lead-ers work with the program and performance banks. I have the feeling I am not using them in the smartest way possible and hope to get some ideas. Here is how I use them. Note that I use my A1 mainly for live jamming and gigging, which may be a bit atypical. I hardly ever connect it to a computer.

Oh, and I have an A1, but I believe the programs and performances are implemented equally in lead 4.

Performances:

• To prepare songs for a gig, or in general to have a set of sounds that I often use together.
• To construct more complex sounds, existing of multiple synths. In such performances, I often use the morph wheel as cross fader between slots.

Programs:

• To "engineer" new synths (often to be saved into a performance later on)
• To play around while jamming (either alone or with my band)

Organizing, Categorizing:

• In Programs I store the created synth sounds that I might be using again. Until now, I categorize them only as bass or not bass sounds in two separate main banks, but I would be interested in other ways of categorizing sounds and thus using the bank-numbers more effectively. The programs are the "ingredients" that cook performances from.
• In performances, I have just a bunch of performances stored. I found them difficult to categorize, so I just put them all in D (I wonder whether more people find themselves working in D all the time so not to overwrite the factory presents. My live would have been easier were A left blank Yes I know this is ridiculous.)

I'm still getting the hang of my A1, so I'm looking forward to hearing some answers to this question. So far, with my band I'm mainly using mono lead sounds with the morph opening the filter or adding drive to let me take it somewhere, and a few pads where I'm using multiple slots and morphs to change things up. I've got everything I'm using regularly stored as performances, in D, like you. I think it makes sense to stay in performance mode when jamming or gigging, even if the performance only uses one slot. Less knob fiddling (no pun intended)

I use Performance mode with my band, one Performance for each song. That Performance might have splits (NL way of doing splits - A,B always left, C,D right etc - is sometimes a bit limiting!), I use the 4 slots to change between sounds if needed like for Vers/Chorus/Bridge. Impulse morphs and mod wheel morphs are the best things (NL4).

Minor detail;
When slots are being sequenced from external source via midi (don't have three hands), it has to be considered that sounds cannot be tweaked live while not being active on the keyboard. F.ex. live tweaking the filter of a background sequence/arpeggio (midi sequenced) while playing other sounds on the keyboard. Workaround: If you don't need a split, it can be done by setting splitpoint to lowest key and having slot C and D for keyboard playing and A (lit and blinking) [and B] active for sequence tweaking without sounding unintentionally from the kb playing.

Programs are for individual sounds that are being created independently and eventually later integrated in a performance. Only "problem" are sounds that fundamentally are based on 2 or more slots (real 3-osc-sounds etc), those need to be saved as Performances. I try to keep them "away" from the song-performances in the "other" performance bank.

I use programs for sound design, but am happy to use all the slots a-d as needed. I then save them as a performance...even if it's just a single program. I also save the programs out as building blocks for future sounds.

I *totally* write over the factory presets because it's trivial to get them back if I ever want them. I generally run through the presets, save the ones that interest me into a single bank, then clear the rest for space.

When I'm using the A1 multi-timbrally (sp?) I do just use programs for each slot. (Obviously.) It depends on what I'm trying to do musically. Sometimes I set slots a/b and c/d each to the same midi channel and treat the synth as bi-timbral.

I use it only in performance mode (I noticed that even in the studio the A1 is the first nord I use only in performance maybe the individual sounds are a little thin)
mainly in layers putting all the performances in succession to the songs I have to interpret.
I program them directly in performance, and sometimes I enter program presets.

Hi all, thanks for your interesting thoughts. I see that you all more or less share my interpretation/use of performances as prepared, ready to use instruments, where the programs function more as the ingredients for those performances.

Than I had another question concerning organization: How do you categorize sounds into banks? I have many programs until now I save them in one bank with function "bass" and one bank with function "lead", but I am actually considering whether it makes more sense to categorize them on basic oscillators. Does anyone have a smart system here, so they know where to find which sound?

Great and interesting thread, thank you.

Being a new nla1 owner myself, I was wondering if you could help me understanding how to easily turn slots on and off in performance mode.
I.e. you have 3 slots on and you want to enable the 4th one, how do you do that? Similarly what if you have 4 slots on and you wanted to disable the 4th one?

Cheers!

Hi varignet. It's a slightly non-intuitive set of button presses, I normally fiddle until I get the right combinations of lights flashing. But it is pretty clearly explained on page 18 of the manual in the section Slot A - D. Pasted text below:

The Slot buttons can be used to quickly change from one program in one Slot to another Program in another Slot.
To change the active Slot, simply press a single Slot button.
To activate additional Slots, hold one Slot button and press the buttons of the additional Slots you wish to activate.
Any combination of the four slots is possible, by pressing two or more Slot buttons at the same time.
Deactivate a Slot: Hold an active Slot button and press another active Slot button to deactivate that other Slot.

Plus you can double click on a slot button to solo it.
And the slot with flashing LED is in focus (it's the one affected when you change any parameter settings).
And you can use multi-focus to put all slots in focus.

Thanks, but I'm a little confused about this line "Any combination of the four slots is possible, by pressing two or more Slot buttons at the same time."

Let's assume for a moment I have three slots active (a-b-c) and I want to activate slot d as well. Should I hold any active slot (i.e. slot a ) and then just press slot d as well?
And when having all slots on, assuming I wanted to turn off just slot d, should I hold any active slot (i.e. a) and just press slot d?