Nord User Forum

Hi, I hope someone can help me here.

I am a proud owner of the Nord Piano since last January.

I have mostly used it to perform live, and also as a controller, but I am recording again and I need to use the actual Nord piano sounds in Logic, NOT the Logic pianos.

How do I do that? In the past when I tried with the midi thing it just let me use it as a controller and I was short on time so I never figured it out.

But now I really need to, because Logic piano sounds are pretty crappy compared to Nord library.

Any help??

thank you very much.

Hello and welcome to the forum.

How do you want to set it up? Do you want to be able to play both the sounds on the Nord as well as other sounds in Logic from the keys of NP? In other words, use the NP as a controller for Logic and at the same time enable Logic to use the sound engine in the NP? That seems like the most flexible setup to me.

To set that up, you'd need both a MIDI interface and an audio interface connected to your Mac (possibly in the same box). You'd hook up the NP with two MIDI cables to the Mac (MIDI OUT on NP connected to MIDI IN on Mac, MIDI OUT on Mac connected to MIDI IN on NP), so probably like you did before. Also you'd connect the audio outputs of the NP to the audio interface. And as a last ingredient, you'd need to disable 'Local Control' so the NP doesn't actually make sound when you press keys on it - it will only make sound when it gets MIDI note messages from Logic.

What's nice about the NP (in my opinion) is that when you turn the NP off, Local Control will automatically be enabled again when you turn it on the next time. I bet that lowered the amount of 'I used my Nord with my DAW software and now it is broken and not making sound anymore!!!1!!' messages they got.

I'm sure I posted a fairly detailed howto on how to set up the Stage with Logic; doing the same with the NP should be very similar. I can't find my own post about that though, so I certainly won't hold it against you if you can't either. I don't have time to produce anything other than this mini wall-of-text, but I could cook something up towards the end of the week. But hopefully you'll get this set up before then; maybe someone else can find my howto or post something that helps you to get this working without issue.

hi there! thanks for the response. Well I am just getting around to setting everything up. Yes, I need to be able to do both. I think I have figured it out, except for how to switch the nord between being a controller and using its own sounds! what would you suggest? Thank you so much!

I'm talking about MIDI cables above, but I just checked the Nord website and it seems the Nord Piano can do MIDI over its USB interface - very convenient.

So you'd just plug your Nord Piano into your Mac using the USB cable. Now you need to do a number of things.

Firstly, you need to make sure that MIDI (over the USB cable) is working properly. To do this, start the 'Audio MIDI Setup' utility. You find this by going to your Applications folder in the Finder. Then browse to the Utilities folder and it should be there. Alternatively (and more convenient), you can find it via Spotlight. Keep cmd (to the left of the spacebar) pressed down and press the spacebar. A small blue window should pop up in the top-right of your screen. Now type part of the name of whatever you're looking for ('Audio MIDI Setup' in this case) and the utility should appear in the list of things Spotlight found that matched whatever you typed.

Start the Audio MIDI Setup utility and make sure the MIDI window is shown. If you don't see it, go to the menubar at the top of your screen and click 'Show MIDI Window' under the Window menu.

You should now see something like this:



In my case, my Mac knows about two MIDI interfaces: the Elektron TM-1 and my Ultranova. If a MIDI interface is currently connected (like the Ultranova) it has a solid bar at the top like; if it is not connected (or not found) like the Elektron TM-1 it will have a 'greyed out' bar at the top. In your case, you should see your Nord Piano, though it may be called differently (I think it will have Nord in the name though) - if you don't have it, press the 'Rescan MIDI' button.

Hopefully you'll now have the Nord Piano's MIDI interface visible here. To test it, you need to press the 'Test Setup' button. If the test setup mode is enabled, the little keyboard shown changes from grey to blue.



If you now press keys on your Nord Piano, the small arrow pointing into the MIDI interface icon should briefly change color from grey to blue and you should hear a short sound coming from your Mac. If this works correctly, you've tested your Nord Piano can send MIDI to your Mac.

You can also test the connection from the Mac to the Nord Piano. First, make sure you can hear the sound coming from your Nord Piano (use a headphone, speakers, etc). If you now press the little arrow pointing down/out of the MIDI interface icon, it should briefly turn to blue and you should hear a sound coming out of your Nord Piano.

If this work, great! If not, it is still possible everything is working correctly. You could verify this, but this is a bit more complex than I'd like to explain here. If you really want to test this, I could explain it but let me know in that case.

You can close the Audio MIDI Setup utility again. It will save its configuration and you shouldn't have to use it again for the Nord.

Once you've verified the Mac and the Nord Piano can communicate properly, it it is time for the second step: setting up Logic. Start Logic and open the Preferences dialog. On any normal Mac application you can simply press cmd + , (comma) to do this, but of course Apple doesn't follow its own user-interface recommendations so you'll need to open it via Logic's menubar.

Edit: the cmd + , thing does seem to work, but only if you've already created a project. Of course, how obvious...



This isn't strictly required, but I recommend enabling the 'All Notes Off' option. When you enable this option, Logic tells attached MIDI devices to shut up when you stop a track - some keyboards also have this function built-in and then it is often called 'panic'.

For this example, you then need to create a project with a Software Instrument track. Depending on your Logic settings, Logic may have already forced you to create a new project (including a single track) on startup. If you have a project open, make sure it has a Software Instrument track. Now hit the + button above the track list to create a new track. For the new track, you won't choose the normal Audio or Software Instrument types, but you'll select External MIDI. The number near the top is the MIDI channel used. Normally this will be 1 on your Nord Piano, but you may have changed this in the settings of your Nord. You can always change the MIDI channel (both in the Nord and Logic), but I'd go with 1 to start with.



You should now have something like this:



The top track is a piano sound in Logic, the bottom track is your Nord Piano. I think you can change the name (Grand Piano), but it is normally based on the MIDI channel used (channel 2 is called Polysynth for example) and I've never wanted to invest the time to find out how to rename it.

If you have the top track selected (in the image above I have the bottom one selected) and play on the Nord, you should hear sound from the EVP88 (or whatever instrument you choose in Logic) coming out of your Mac. You should however also hear sound coming out of the Nord; this will be whatever sound you happen to have selected.

If you select the bottom track and play on the Nord, you should just hear the sound coming from the Nord (but not your Mac).

There should however be something weird about the sound coming from your Nord in this case - whether you hear it might depend on how well you know the sound of your Nord though. When you press a key on the Nord, two things happen:

1. The Nord sends a MIDI message for the note you pressed to its sound engine and it makes a sound
2. The Nord sends a MIDI message for the note you pressed to Logic, which in turn sends it back to the Nord's sound engine which causes it to make a sound

Pressing that key on your Nord causes a note to be triggered (step 1) and then very quickly retriggered (step 2) a few milliseconds after step 1. Because it happens so quickly you may not clearly hear it, but it does happen.

If you have the External MIDI instrumented selected, Logic 'echoes' the MIDI messages it receives from the Nord back to the Nord, causing this retriggering. This is actually what you want, if you're using the Nord as a controller for Logic. The solution is to stop the Nord from performing step 1. You do this by setting 'Local Control' to Off . How to do this is described on page 16 of the manual. As noted below the description in the manual, Local Control defaults back to On if you've turned your Nord Piano off (note that this doesn't happen on all Nords, on some you'll need to turn it back on manually to play the Nord without using a sequencer like Logic).

If you disabled Local Control, the retriggering should be gone. Also, if you now select the first track and play your Nord, you should now only hear sound coming from your Mac. Now quit Logic and play on your Nord - you should hear nothing at all.

With Local Control turned off, the Nord will only make a sound if an external sequencer (like Logic) sends it MIDI data. This is because step 1 (see above) is no longer performed. To 'fix' this, turn Local Control back on or turn your Nord Piano off and back on again.

You should now be able to both use a) your Nord as a controller for Logic (either using software instruments or external MIDI instruments such as the Nord) and b) use Logic to use your Nord as a sound module for Logic.

Have a look at the transport bar at the bottom: when you press notes on the Nord, the transport bar will show you some information about it:



I my case I pressed C1 on keyboard 1 (that's the 1 before the C3) with a velocity of 7.

I recommend you perform an additional step, especially if you want to record sound coming from your Nord in Logic. Up to now the sound that came out of your Nord wasn't going through Logic. This means that Logic isn't able to record it. Additionally, it means that instruments in Logic (so software instruments) and your playing on the Nord may not be in sync. This is because software instruments (but also recording audio) causes a very small delay. Logic can automatically compensate for this, but only if all the sound (including external instruments) is processed by Logic.

So we need to send the sound of the Nord through Logic. To do this, you need to connect the outputs of the Nord to some kind of audio interface (hopefully you'll have one). You cannot send audio over the USB connection, only MIDI data and updates. MIDI itself is information about keys you press, how hard you press those keys, knobs your turn, etc: you cannot send an audio signal over MIDI. Quite a lot of synths can send audio over USB, but they don't do this via MIDI (the Nords are not able to do this).

Once you've connected the Nord to your audio inputs, you need to set Logic up to use them. Recreate a project as described above. Now add a new track; choose Audio this time, choose the right audio inputs and make sure Input Monitoring is turned on.



If you now select the External MIDI instrument track and play on the Nord, you should hear the Nord via your Mac and you should see the audio track is registering sound.



This is not an ideal way to set this up, but it'll work. I know you can do it in such a way that you'll only get a single track but I can't figure out anymore how to do it. I know I did it in the past, via the dialog shown below:



Note you'd set Input to the same values as when using an aux channel strip and not to None like shown here.

Oh, did I already mention that I think that setting this up is completely non-obvious and more difficult than it should be?

Edit: if you can't get the audio coming from your Nord to work, check if you're using the right audio interface as an input. Open the Preferences dialog and go to the Audio tab.



Make sure that the right audio interface is selected where it says Input Device. If it says 'Built-in Input', it is actually recording the line-in connection of your Mac, not the audio interface you have your Nord connected to. Of course, if you had the right cable, you could connect your Nord to the line-in of your Mac. In my case I was recording with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.