How to save individual programs outside of Manager?

[ZeroZero]

Yes that is the case. It seems we are locked in then, which is ridiculous
Z

It was a design decision for how the Nord works. It's not ridiculous, it's one of the things that allows your Nord keyboard to turn on in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

It's a live stage instrument, not a workstation.

You don't need 15 different acoustic pianos on stage. You don't need 15 different Rhodes samples, or most of the other 1000s of individual sounds that people seem to be stuck focusing on. If you can't perform with the list below, then I'd suggest you spend more time focusing on your actual musical skill rather than the mental masterbation of worrying about having every variation of every sound loaded on a keyboard at one time.

Here are the basics
- 1 or 2 acoustic pianos
- 1 or 2 rhodes emultations
- 1 Wurlitzer
- 1 or 2 clavinet sounds
- 1 harpsichord
- 1 vibraphone
- 1 marimba

The B3 organ engine will produce all of the Hammond sounds you wan't

The synth engine can handle Choirs, String Pads, Flutes, orchestral pads, etc.

The biggest area of weakness is in articulated sounds that require multi-velocity samples (horns, plucked guitars, etc). And even here there are some work arounds that get you pretty far.

Well you have your views and I have mine. For me all the pianos are sub par. OK for a loud rock gig, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot to like about the board, but there is no goto piano for me. The Stockholm is very good. The Hammond too.

I have a lot of curated programs, one wrong refresh in Sounmanager and they get wiped. This is why I thing external to both board and Soundmanager would be wise.

[cphollis]

"For me all the pianos are sub par". That's unfortunate, because Nord pianos are generally considered the best.

All of us who play Nords understand (a) there's a huge library of pianos and (b) they won't all fit into memory at the same time. So we pick a dozen or so of our favorites and move forward.

Yes, it's true that if you aren't paying attention when using Sound Manager, you can easily wipe out your programs and then you have to do a restore. The solution is to pay attention.

[maxpiano]

For me all the pianos are sub par. OK for a loud rock gig, I suppose.

Not to make you change your mind, but just to offer you a different vision


(the rest has already been said: you have a choice of pianos samples and different sizes to use and so you can personalize your piano samples set, other brands/models don't even allow this, you get what you get from the factory; then if you don' like Nord pianos in general you probably bought the wrong board, at least for pianos )

[ZeroZero]

For me all the pianos are sub par. OK for a loud rock gig, I suppose.

Not to make you change your mind, but just to offer you a different vision


(the rest has already been said: you have a choice of pianos samples and different sizes to use and so you can personalize your piano samples set, other brands/models don't even allow this, you get what you get from the factory; then if you don' like Nord pianos in general you probably bought the wrong board, at least for pianos )

I would have liked to try this, but if I download it i have to delete other pianos because of the ridiculous 2gb limit.

I am just not willing to settle for sub par pianos of 50mb so it would be 189mb or nothing and as I only have 45mb of space left I would have to alter or delete other programs/ pianos. Very often "Mellow" means eqd down rather than true mellow. For a market leading board this is ridiculous. 50mb pianos should not even be a consideration, unless modelled, even then...I need expressiveness for each note (not some), I need wood in the sound, I need pedal and srtring, resonance, no compromises, every note. Cheap small pianos may have a certain novelty appeal, but to the pianist they soon lose aural appeal and become two dimensional. Ok for a few bars in say a film setting, or even on a gig. Not as a goto in a studio. For the moeny we pay - for this number one spot keynoard, there should be better solutions.

Z

[Schorsch]

@ZeroZero: Based on your expectations and responses, I firmly believe that you made a massively wrong choice when purchasing the Nord Stage 4. As already mentioned, these are live boards designed for quick availability and operation on stage and provide the most important sounds and engines for this purpose. Did you not check this out before buying the Stage 4, or why are you disappointed now?

What you might want is more of a workstation instrument, or maybe even just a high quality master keyboard connected to a laptop and running all kinds of virtual instruments you like, and also expandable in terms of available memory.

[maxpiano]

For me all the pianos are sub par. OK for a loud rock gig, I suppose.

Not to make you change your mind, but just to offer you a different vision


(the rest has already been said: you have a choice of pianos samples and different sizes to use and so you can personalize your piano samples set, other brands/models don't even allow this, you get what you get from the factory; then if you don' like Nord pianos in general you probably bought the wrong board, at least for pianos )

I would have liked to try this, but if I download it i have to delete other pianos because of the ridiculous 2gb limit.
Ì
I am just not willing to settle for sub par pianos of 50mb so it would be 189mb or nothing and as I only have 45mb of space left I would have to alter or delete other programs/ pianos. Very often "Mellow" means eqd down rather than true mellow. For a market leading board this is ridiculous. 50mb pianos should not even be a consideration, unless modelled, even then...I need expressiveness for each note (not some), I need wood in the sound, I need pedal and srtring, resonance, no compromises, every note. Cheap small pianos may have a certain novelty appeal, but to the pianist they soon lose aural appeal and become two dimensional. Ok for a few bars in say a film setting, or even on a gig. Not as a goto in a studio. For the moeny we pay - for this number one spot keynoard, there should be better solutions.

Z

You didn't get the point: it is not about that Mellow Upright sample.... you said Nord is only for pop/rock, right? So I showed you an example of a Nord being used for classical playing...

Then, the price/features argument is a frequent but inconsistent one, there are analog synths costing more and having a more restricted range of sounds and features, some people pay even more for a guitar or a bass: so what? Sometimes you pay for the quality, not quantity and also in terms of piano samples it is not just the amount of Megabytes that makes them good or bad, you should judge with your fingers and ears not counting the bytes.

Anyway, can you name another Digital Stage piano that has what you are looking for? If you can name it, then buy it, otherwise when you want more in the studio the goto are Virtual Instruments and with a better (more pianistic) master keyboard, by far.

[cgrafx]

Well you have your views and I have mine. For me all the pianos are sub par. OK for a loud rock gig, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot to like about the board, but there is no goto piano for me. The Stockholm is very good. The Hammond too.

I have a lot of curated programs, one wrong refresh in Sounmanager and they get wiped. This is why I thing external to both board and Soundmanager would be wise.

You do know you can save and load individual bundles of sounds and patches?

Nord keyboards are used by thousands of artists playing in lots of genres other than "load Rock Gigs".

So your opinion is clearly not shared by a significantly large group of extremely talented musicians that manage to successfully perform everyday on their Nord keyboards. (Jazz, pop, R&B, classical, etc)

I can't specifically address what failings you seem to have with your Nord, but perhaps you selected the wrong tool for your particular usage.

You can't buy a truck and then complain that it doesn't drive like a luxury sedan or a handle like a Maserati.

If you have a specific need for more fidelity than the Nord can provide, there are lots of other options to fill that role. But you aren't going to get them in a pre-built stage style piano package.

If you aren't playing live, then you definitely selected the wrong instrument, as there are many other solutions better suited for a studio setting (Including an actual real piano)

[ZeroZero]

Not to make you change your mind, but just to offer you a different vision


(the rest has already been said: you have a choice of pianos samples and different sizes to use and so you can personalize your piano samples set, other brands/models don't even allow this, you get what you get from the factory; then if you don' like Nord pianos in general you probably bought the wrong board, at least for pianos )

I would have liked to try this, but if I download it i have to delete other pianos because of the ridiculous 2gb limit.
Ì
I am just not willing to settle for sub par pianos of 50mb so it would be 189mb or nothing and as I only have 45mb of space left I would have to alter or delete other programs/ pianos. Very often "Mellow" means eqd down rather than true mellow. For a market leading board this is ridiculous. 50mb pianos should not even be a consideration, unless modelled, even then...I need expressiveness for each note (not some), I need wood in the sound, I need pedal and srtring, resonance, no compromises, every note. Cheap small pianos may have a certain novelty appeal, but to the pianist they soon lose aural appeal and become two dimensional. Ok for a few bars in say a film setting, or even on a gig. Not as a goto in a studio. For the moeny we pay - for this number one spot keynoard, there should be better solutions.

Z

You didn't get the point: it is not about that Mellow Upright sample.... you said Nord is only for pop/rock, right? So I showed you an example of a Nord being used for classical playing...

Then, the price/features argument is a frequent but inconsistent one, there are analog synths costing more and having a more restricted range of sounds and features, some people pay even more for a guitar or a bass: so what? Sometimes you pay for the quality, not quantity and also in terms of piano samples it is not just the amount of Megabytes that makes them good or bad, you should judge with your fingers and ears not counting the bytes.

Anyway, can you name another Digital Stage piano that has what you are looking for? If you can name it, then buy it, otherwise when you want more in the studio the goto are Virtual Instruments and with a better (more pianistic) master keyboard, by far.

Whatever. I can critisize the Stage 4 if i wish- this is a forum. I tried the Roland V stage it is a better product all round except for one mission critical thing (for me) the Piano orientated action was too tough for Hammond. It was reminiscent of my years on a Roland 700NX - superb action for piano.

Nord gets sometimes defended like a cult sometimes IMO, it can't even load all it's sounds.

I leave it there.

Z

[ZeroZero]

So your opinion is clearly not shared by a significantly large group of extremely talented musicians that manage to successfully perform everyday on their Nord keyboards. (Jazz, pop, R&B, classical, etc)

I can't specifically address what failings you seem to have with your Nord, but perhaps you selected the wrong tool for your particular usage.

You can't buy a truck and then complain that it doesn't drive like a luxury sedan or a handle like a Maserati.

I know my views are not shared. The Stage CAN be improved by much more memory and deeper sampling. the fact that "a significantly large group of extremely talented musicians that manage to successfully perform everyday on their Nord keyboards. (Jazz, pop, R&B, classical, etc)"

is neither here nor there. If you were to take a look at the Roland V stage, you will see it has many improved features over the Stage 4.

It's not a sin to say I don't like some features. It also has many good ones. Sound management is defintely not one of them. The VDU nd consequently the controllability of the sounds is much better on the V stage.

Z

I leave it there

[cgrafx]

Ok.. so you own a stage 4 compact with the semi-weighted keybed (that explains a lot). That keybed is going to get flat piano sounds, specifically because of the limitations of the keybed (great for organ and passible for synth, not great for piano stuff). The difference between my Stage 3 compact and my Piano 5 is night and day. See my previous posts about this. The difference between playing my stage 3 from the piano 5 is also night and day. This is specifically because of the differences in the way the mechanics of the weighted action are translated and drive the dynamics of the piano sound engine.

Asking a single keyboard to be best of class for all uses is a pipe dream (something has to be compromised). That's never going to work out the way you wish for. There is a reason a B3 doesn't have a weighted keybed on it. You don't physically play a weighted action keybed the way you play on a semi-weighted or synth keybed. They may look like the same thing, but they are completely different instruments.

You don't play a 12-string guitar the same way you play a 6-string guitar. Yes, the fretboard and frets are the same, but they are also two very different instruments.