Nord User Forum

Our church just bought a nord Piano 5 that I am excited to play, but I have always been a piano player so know very little about pad/sounds.
I am a techy so have read the manual and feel very comfortable with the controls and can split layer etc...
What I don't now is how to make the sounds I'm looking for ...
We play hillsong/elevation so I think I need drone... but I only see bass drone, is that what I need?
I don't want to do patches because I don't own the piano and no computer is hooked up to it... but I can if absolutely necessary...
I was hoping I could google a certain song and it would tell me what layers/efx/etc I could set up on the Nord for that song but I can't seem to find any.
Can someone point me in the right direction. If I could even set up a generic elevation/drone pad that would be a start.
Thanks!

I'm not at all experienced with the type of sounds you are looking for. But there are some obstacles:
a) The Nord Piano is a stage piano, no synth. It only has the possibility to add some sample sounds to the famous Nord piano sounds;
b) the Nord Sample Library 4 isn't published yet. The only samples you can use are already loaded to the NP5;
c) for the moment, the only way to get other sounds is to sample them yourself - with the help of Nord Sample Editor 4;
d) I don't think there are already commercial offers for NP5 samples around.

That's why I'd recommend to concentrate on the wonderful AP and EP sounds - it's enough labour for the moment to adapt them to your taste and need. You have a great instrument.

And maybe get a simple synth for what you are looking for.

If you badly need a "droning" sound, can't wait for Nord to release the full set of sampled synth sounds, and don't want to use a different keyboard for just one song, you can try the steps below to, maybe, get the sound and effect you want.

On the Sample Synth find a basic sound that you think would work for the "drone" character you want. You can change (edit) the attack and release parameters for any sample sound using the control knobs to get a kind of drone function. Set the Release control to the Sustain position if you want the sound to continue (drone) without a change in volume as long as you hold down a key; set it to the maximum position to continue sounding after releasing a key; it will sound for about 45 seconds, very gradually falling in volume, after the release. Changing the Attack setting may help with transient sound at the beginning of the sound. Try adding the Unison effect to give the droning sound some sonic movement.

You will have to save that edited sample sound to a Program location (a patch) to avoid going through this process every time you need that drone sound, but no computer is required to do this. The factory default configuration has 100 empty program locations in program banks M through P, so you can store your drone sound program without overwriting a program someone else may want to use.

Note: Since I'm not familiar with the song(s) you mention, this may not work for you.

Don't have a Piano 5, but on my Piano 4, there's a sample called "A1 The Prophet" that maybe sounds similar to what you are talking about when used as a pad, but I'm not sure its what you're looking for.