Nord User Forum

Hello all. I am planning on purchasing a Nord Stage 2 as soon as they become available in the NYC area. I am presently using about 45 different programs on live gigs
Since I plan on using the NS2 to replace my S-70XS as my gig keyboard I wanted to ask all of you experienced Nord owners how you navigate through your programs in a live setting.
My S-90 had banks of 16 sounds visible in the LCD display while playing the keyboard, making it easy to choose a program for the next song without changing the sound. I was extremely disappointed to find that the the S-70XS eliminated this feature. I had to create an alphabetical program list to compensate, and from what I see of the Nord system I assume I will still have to do this but I was hoping to hear from those of you with experience.
Thanks in advance for any information/advice you can give.

Unfortunately there is no way of selecting another patch without changing it. But rearranging them is quite easy with the NS manager. You have A/B sections for 5 programs over 20 pages over 4 banks, thats 400 programs each with A/B sides.

With some smart programming, you could have all you need for a one song in one or two programs, several sounds split over the keyboard, two different ones in each A/B section.

In the Editor you could just save all your programs and rearrange them in the desired order, even if you have to put one several times over the list. so that is just a matter of one button press and you'll always land onthe correct program.

Say you need three main sounds, a small organ base, a Synth lead and a full piano (this is program Z). You split organ and Synth on B panel, and put piano on A panel. But you need to change to a wholly different sound (program Y), which is another program and then change back. So then you arrange> Z,Y,Z so you do not have to go back to Z.

With 400 different program locations, this is quite easy, you just make each program save it on the computer, make your patch list and just wait for it to be uploaded.

hi Vocalchords!
welcome to this forum.
i am a former owner of the Yammy S90 and they are two very different keyboards. if i understand you correctly you liked the possibility to bring up all 16 patches in the display? that isn't possible on the NS, because of the size and resolution of the display.

however, when working in VOICE- PERFORMANCE- or MASTER mode you will discover note cut offs when changing patches. on the NS you have two different setups available (PANEL/(SLOT) A and B) and you can easily switch between them without any cut offs at all. it's similar to working in SEQ PLAY mode on you S90.

my tip to you would be to arrange you patches to your live set list, independent of witch instrument you play. then you just have to press [INC/+] (or scroll the value dial on the NS)! :)

good luck!

Thanks for your informative replies.
The quote below is from the NS2 manual. Unless I'm interpreting it incorrectly it looks like you can set it to not change sounds until you press the program button when navigating through the banks. Is that possible.
From what I've read it looks like there are no drum or percussion sounds, is that right?
Thanks.

"The Banks are accessed with the Bank buttons A. B, C and D,
above the display.
A new program is immediately activated when you press a Bank,
Page or Program button. If you want to navigate with the Bank
and/or Page buttons and wait with the loading of a new program
until you press a program button, this can be set in the System
Menu, the Program Loading setting."

Yep, no drums nothing like that. But you could make your own multisamples and basically have the most complex of patches in one big sample.

And yes, the only way to change the program is by pressing buttons. You could get a midi box that transmits a pedal information through midi: http://www.midisolutions.com/products.htm