Nord User Forum

Hi guys!
A few months ago I've bought a Nord Stage Classic, and lately I've been trying to explore its MIDI capabilities. I wanted to use the Nord as both a Master and its Slave, so that I could record the notes I play and the parameter changes I apply, and than change that filter sweep into a perfect sine (the Classic Stage's synth section really lacks a LFO imo) or quantize that Dmaj7 arpeggio, and send it back to the Stage to play. To do that I connected Nord's MIDI In to my audio interface's MIDI Out, and Out to In respectively (I don't know if that's important, but I use Steinberg UR22 mkII), and Nord's audio outs 1&2 to Steinberg's audio ins 1&2, of course. In Ableton Live I created a MIDI track with an external instrument. With the MIDI Control Local set to "on", the sound of the Stage is distorted and "doubled", because it comes from the keyboard and from MIDI In messages simoultanesly (I guess? It would have to mean that it uses just one section in one panel twice). With the MIDI Control Local set to "off" everything seems to work fine, the instrument makes sounds only because of the MIDI messages it receives, but than the Stage behaves weirdly - it is impossible to control the sound by tweaking the knobs, and particular Nord's sections (Organ, Piano, Synth) cannot be turned on or off. However I discovered, that sometimes it's possible to do that if the corresponding panel is receiving MIDI messages from itself. Does turning Local off also make Nord "immune" to its own CC messages, and not only to the keyboard messages? Is this the correct way that the Local off should work? I made my way through the Nord Stage Midi Implementation pdf, but I didn't really found the answers I'm looking for. Thank you very much in advance!

Ps. Oh, and I got just one more off-topic question - do you know a program that could graphically show the knob's current position, especially in the Synth Section? Not all of the knobs are encoders (it's another thing I just can't understand and get over with) and sometimes I would really want to know how a certain program is built

It may be that Ableton receives the CC messages but it doesn't transmit them back to your Stage.

Do Ableton have any MIDI Monitor to see if it receives the CC Messages?

Ramon, Ableton actually shows both ingoing and outgoing messages, and the Stage's MIDI led indicator blinks

You need to have a MIDI Channel assigned to at least one Panel,better one to each Panel, to be able to receive CCs and PCs, if I remember well. Of course you also need to have CC/PC mode set to Send/Receive.

PS: I think the suggestion to check what the computer is receiving from NS is also a good one.