Version control of programs across multiple Nords

[ericL]

This may be a niche use case for me, though I seem to be experiencing it more frequently as I've been very actively learning new songs and programming lots of new sounds for a fairly new band and working on new sounds for a few big reunion shows in another band.

My primary instrument for performance is the NS3 Compact. I've had two of them over the years, dating back to around 2018 when I made the move from NS2 to NS3.

One NS3 lives in a soft case and is mostly used for rehearsals and sound design at home. The other NS3 lives in a flight case and is mostly used for gigs. Usually the day of a gig, I upload bundles of anything new in my rehearsal NS3 to my laptop. Typically I will bundle song data, as this will catch any sort of new programs and samples that I've added. Once uploaded to my laptop, I'll grab the gig NS3 and download these new songs into it for the show.

When it's brand new data, it works easily and I know what I've added. I've run across a situation where I'm using some older/existing programs in songs, perhaps with some minor edits to these programs. I'll also sometimes make a quick edit during a gig in my gig NS3 to something like a delay time, wet/dry mix, add a quick morph, etc. The result is that I have data in each NS3 that differs slightly.

The Nord Stage Manager is really helpful with a feature that finds the data differences and during the download will flash up a message such as "The program Eric's Main Organ already exists in target instrument, but is different. Would you like to replace it?" Which leads me to a worry over which of these programs is the one I really want, and what if I unintentionally overwrite something that was a better version?

What I've started doing is clearing more spaces in the program memory and just creating all new programs with different names, even if it is 99% the same as one of my existing spots.

Does anyone else run across this situation and have other suggestions? Thank you for reading my long thread.

[dmamfmgm]

I checked your gear is a Nord Stage 2 and a Nord Stage 3.

(Chances are at some point a Nord Stage 4 owner will become motivated enough to add support for them but it's not there right now as far as I know.)

I'd suggest using the awesome software from one of the users on this forum: viewtopic.php?t=19939

It could show you exactly what the differences were in two patches you *think* are similar but you want to find out what exactly they contain. Take a look!

[FZiegler]

I'm not that experienced in things like that. But versioning (and documenting it) is something I learned my lesson about: a) it's good to do; b) you almost never do it as strictly as you should have done considering the moment when you need it.

There are things I'm versioning thoroughly, and it's good to do it. Research items mostly. But I've never done it with Nord programs. I've even not documented most of my sounds - and if you didn't describe what you did and what for, documenting changes will be of no big use. So, no need to put version numbers into the program name, either. Versioning consists of all three.

If I've done things like that in some other context, notes are sometimes spread over multiple devices and files (smartphone, laptop's internal memory, netword storage etc.). No good thing, either. I know, I'll never be able to provide a complete documentation about changes. Notes may be helpful anyway if they are very precise: "2024-05-09 Changed reverb from .4 to 1.1 to include spacial feeling" may tell you if your program version is prior to this date or not if you need to find out.

Deleting old versions isn't the way I go - I'm not the guy who easily gets rid of old stuff. I rather pack it into some folder called "2023-12 Nord sounds.BAK". Which will give some hints about the version, too.

The best documentation I do is concerning OS and programs handling on my IT devices. Looks like a log file, starting every line with the date, followed by a short description. Could be changed into the format "2024-05-01 Superstition-MW NS2 added MW support for EP drive on panel A" for your purposes so you have both formats and all songs documented in one file.

Besides, I guess you may loose part of your changes because you selected the wrong version. That's how it is. You'll probably have some progress anyway.

[WannitBBBad]

I primarily save a new version with the automatic numbering that the Stage 3 adds to the name. That approach works OK if you use letters (A, B, C,..) as the second-last character in the name when you have more than one program for the same song. Ultimately Nord Sound Manager is needed for cleanup of older versions if no longer needed and renaming sometimes of newer versions. It would be nice if NSM could simply alert the user when trying to load an older version of a Stage 3 program. Take care

[ericL]

Thanks for the suggestions and wisdom!

One of the biggest "misses" I had during the process of moving sounds around is related to my core organ sound that I use on the NS3. I have dialed in a very satisfying combination of effects and EQ etc. that just really sounds great to me and cuts well live plus on studio recordings. I've tried to implement these edits across any of my programs that use organ...which is quite a few.

Somewhere along the way, things got out of sync between my live and rehearsal NS3 and I found myself on a gig wondering what happened to the killer organ sound...it had been overwritten by an older version during bundle transfer...so I am just trying to get ahead of things like this and avoid the possibility of losing great sounds.

I spent a LOT of time a few months ago organizing everything in both of my NS3 units, so hopefully I'll have good luck and smooth sailing in the future.

Note: I love that the NS4 has the notion of a "preset" for each of the sections - piano, organ, synth. If the NS3 had this, it would make things a bit easier. I'm not quite ready to move up to the NS4 just yet.