How do you organize your patches?

[audios]

With my previous Stage 3 I put in a lot of time organizing my patches/programs for easier discoverability. I'm now starting from scratch with my Stage 4 and I'm wondering what other people do?

On my Stage 3 I used this method:
A-B: Acoustic Pianos
C-D: Rhodes/Wurly/Digital pianos
E-F: Organs
G-H: Synth pads
I-K: Synth leads
L: Acoustic Strings
M-N: Brass/Woodwinds

I naturally had some gaps with no patches, but knowing the letters for sections made it manageable to jump to something efficiently. I'm not a gigging musician, so I do like having variety for creative inspiration.

What methods for organizing do you all do?

[allbrittjd]

New to Nord, so I'm following this thread to see what others say, but I think we only have banks A through H.

[cphollis]

With my previous Stage 3 I put in a lot of time organizing my patches/programs for easier discoverability. I'm now starting from scratch with my Stage 4 and I'm wondering what other people do?

On my Stage 3 I used this method:
A-B: Acoustic Pianos
C-D: Rhodes/Wurly/Digital pianos
E-F: Organs
G-H: Synth pads
I-K: Synth leads
L: Acoustic Strings
M-N: Brass/Woodwinds

I naturally had some gaps with no patches, but knowing the letters for sections made it manageable to jump to something efficiently. I'm not a gigging musician, so I do like having variety for creative inspiration.

What methods for organizing do you all do?

One of the cool new features of the NS4 are individual section presets for organ, piano and synth. It takes a bit more work upfront, but you win long-term because everything is re-usable somewhere else. I have maybe 8 different piano sounds I like, a dozen organ sounds, and several dozen synth sounds.

However, you can't play section presets directly, they have to be referenced by a program. Since I play in cover bands, I rarely (if ever) use individual sounds throughout a single song, which might be a combination of a piano preset, organ preset and synth preset(s) with a bit of adjusting. Lots of layering!

Also, if I adjust a section preset (adjust EQ, FX, etc.), it's now adjusted in all the programs that use that sound. I use one song per program, unless there are multiple distinct parts I can't cover with a single program, and then it's "Africa 1", "Africa 2" and so on.

If I've just jamming with people and a tune comes up, I just have to think of an existing song program that's close enough, e.g. need acoustic piano and organ, etc. Or I can go to a blank program and dial up the preset(s) I want.

It's a different model, but works well for me. Although you don't perform out, I think it's the quickest way to grab the sounds you want and layer/split them.

[audios]

One of the cool new features of the NS4 are individual section presets for organ, piano and synth…

Thanks for sharing your insight cphollis. I do like the individual section presets, and I didn’t consider modifying them. Did you start by clearing those, or did you subtractive the ones you didn’t want, and tweak as needed?

I’m similar in that I have about 10 pianos and 10 organs I like, and maybe 30-40 synths id like to have ready access to.

Aside from that, there are things I like to have in the mix on occasion: crackling vinyl SFX, heavy filtering tied to mod wheel or pedal, overdrive tied to pedal, etc… in the past I would basically have 3-4 of the same Nefertiti epiano, but with various mod configurations. Is there another approach where I have programs with these mods applied, but the main parts are more variable; possibly not even present by default?

[cphollis]

Make sure you read the manual (p 41) before getting too far ...

FX are stored with the section preset. Not sure how controller mappings are stored as I never change mine, my guess would be as part of the program, and not the section preset.

If you wanted quick access to a piano sound (Nefertiti) combined with a synth/sample playback (crackling vinyl), that would be a program, not a section preset.

I do have several pre-made programs (in the H range) that I use as a starting point for specific sounds (e.g. piano/organ/horn section). I can dial up that pre-made combo sound, adjust a few things (e.g. substitute a different horn section) and then "Save As" to a new program name/location.

Between the two capabilities, it really speeds things up when coming up with presets for 30+ new cover songs. After you step through it a few times it becomes second nature, and I would miss the feature if it wasn't there on some other keyboard.