Nord User Forum

Hello,

I am controlling the selection of sounds for the two keyboards in my live setup from an external device (iPad with BandHelper app) for each of the songs in my playlist. I am planning to replace one of the two keyboards with my NS3. The user manual mentions a setting for receiving program change message for the global midi channel only (page 55), is it also possible to send individual program change messages for panel A and panel B?

Best regards Georg

No. It's a feature I've long wished for... leaving the sound of one slot/panel in place while being able to change only the other one... I'd wished for that feature internally, but externally over MIDI would be almost as good.

It would also be cool to be able to send Program Change commands that would call up designated Synth Presets.

Hmm that’s not good - when Global is set to midi channel 1 I thought of assigning midi channel 2 to panel A and midi channel 3 to channel B, then sending MSB/LSB/PC cia midi channel 3 would change the program of panel B, leaving panel A unchanged, which is exactly what I need when using an external key bed (RD800) to play the piano of the NS3

Is this possible with NS 2EX? If so I will probably return my Stage 3 compact and look for a used Stage 2EX instead ...

What you write does not make sense as a Program includes settings for both Panels, talking about a “Panel A Program” has no sense on a Nord Stage (of any generation), but.. you can still obtain what you are looking for with a simple workaround: create 2 Programs where Panel A is the same and Panel B is different then switch the whole Program, thanks to smooth transition Panel A will continue to sound unchanged an Panel B will have the new sounds...

Thanks a lot maxpiano, the Nord is completely new to me and I’m learning the structure from scratch, misunderstood the concept of the panels by thinking that each panel holds an individual program in fact it’s the other way around as I understood from you, so sorry for the stupid question

Hervshahn wrote:Thanks a lot maxpiano, the Nord is completely new to me and I’m learning the structure from scratch, misunderstood the concept of the panels by thinking that each panel holds an individual program in fact it’s the other way around as I understood from you, so sorry for the stupid question

No worries and no question is stupid ever, when the doubt is true so when I said it “didn’t make sense” it was not meant at all as a comment on you but rather an intro to explain to you why, of course being new to Nords you may have some confusion

Copying from a post of mine elsewhere, discussing how to work around this limitation:
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That's a feature I've long wished for, especially when driving one slot/panel from an external keyboard... to be able to "lock" the slot/panel you're triggering from your remote keyboard, so that (until released) subsequent Program changes would only change the sound on the slot/panel you're triggering from the Nord's own keys.

One way you kind of can do this, though, is to avoid using saved Programs , but instead change the program elements "manually" on the fly. For example, let's say you're playing a Program that has piano sound from panel/slot B triggered from your external board, while the internal keys are set up to play a split of an organ and a string sound on panel/slot A, and now you want to keep piano playing on the external but change the internal keys (panel A) to clav and brass. You can't simply call up a Program with clav and brass on the internal keys, without simultaneously changing your (panel B) external sound to whatever you've stored in that Program. But you can "manually" change the (panel A) internal sounds on the fly, without affecting what is being triggered by the external board, so one partial solution here would be to go to the Panel A controls, turn off the Organ sound, turn on a Clav sound (from the Pianos section), and manually change the Synth section sound from a String preset to a Brass preset (the synth section has its own recallable presets). But this gets more complicated if you want your new Clav+Brass sound to have different effects, different EQ, different split point compared to you original Organ+String sound, now you'd be getting involved with too many knobs and buttons, and this is what using a saved Program fixes, so this approach really works only when the changes you want to make to just one panel are pretty minimal.

There is a second workaround if you almost always use, say, one of the same two sounds for what you want triggered from the external keyboard. For example, let's say that, 90% of the time, your external keyboard is set for either your one favorite acoustic piano or your one favorite electric piano. You could have two copies of each of your saved internal-keyboard sets of sounds... one Program with those sounds paired with an externally driven acoustic piano, and another Program with the identical internal sounds paired with an externally driven electric piano. Using my example above, you'd set up four Programs instead of two... they would be:

(A) internal organ and strings over external acoustic piano
(B) internal clav and brass over external acoustic piano
(C) internal organ and strings over external electric piano
(D) internal clav and brass over external electric piano

If you're playing Program (A) organ+strings over acoustic, and you want to change just the internal sounds, you'd invoke program (B) which changes the internal sounds, but uses the same externally-driven sound; and similarly, if you were playing Program (C), you'd invoke (D) to make the same internal sound change. Since the NS3 introduced seamless sound transition, this will work in a way that did not work on the older models, as making these switches should not cause the externally driven sound to glitch (i.e. sustained piano notes won't be cut off when you make the change). So this is another way to change the internally driven sound while leaving the externally driven sound in place, and allows the new internal sound to instantly have its own splits, EQ, effects, etc. This would be unwieldy with too many different externally driven sounds, and it also means that you want to be more careful about tweaking the externally driven sound in real-time, as any changes you make will disappear and resort to preset when you invoke your next Program even if it uses the same piano sound. So realistically, I think this is best for "special case" scenarios where you have a handful of very common internal sounds you like to use, and want to be able to quickly switch among those favorite internal sounds while keeping your externally driven sound the same, when you also have only a very small number of very common externally-driven sounds you like to use.

A combination of the two approaches will give you numerous ways you can effectively change just your internally triggered Panel A sound while keeping the externally triggered Panel B sound continuing to play the same piano sound without cutting outs. But yeah, unfortunately, there's no way to temporarily "lock" a panel into place such that it will stay the same no matter what change you want to make to the other panel. Maybe someday...