Nord User Forum

I just got an Electro 6 (my first Nord) Assigning instruments to the 2 zones seems pretty straightforward, but I'm trying to assign a synth sound to each zone and can't seem to get it to work. I will assign the first one, set it to either the lower or upper zone, then when I go to the 2nd sound I want to assign, the split just goes away, I've been working on this for 2 hours now-any help would be appreciate.
(also, I've the same concept except trying to assign 2 different piano sounds and have the same issue)

You can only play one synth sound at a time (and likewise, you can only play one piano sound at a time).

I'm afraid you've run into one of the primary limitations of the Electro line vs. the Stage line.
The latter gives you two engines each of synth, organ, and piano (one of each simultaneously on two layers), while the Electro only gives you one of each.

... just to elaborate a bit on what anotherscott and analogika already said: As far as I know, one of the main reason for this is that the sound engines are implemented in their own hardware, and are independent and not interchangeable. This means it is not just a question of running several version of the same program on a common CPU, so there is no easy way to do it.

Yes, this is one of the limitation on the Nord Electro 6. Especially with synth sounds. It's impossible to have a Minimoog-like bass sound on the lower part and a Prophet-5 brass sound on the upper part of the keyboard.

But...for piano sound, e-pianos, it's possible to avoid a little bit this limitation.
You can assign a piano sample (from the Nord Sample Library 3.0 - under Pianos) to the lower part and assign a Rhodes Nefertiti (from the Nord Piano Library) on the upper part of the keyboard. Of course, the piano-sample quality from the Nord Sample Library 3.0 is not really identical to the dedicated piano library. But it helps sometimes...

I do the same to obtain some "fatter" e-pianos on my Nord Electro 6 with the layering the Nefertiti with the Epiano 3 Shallow from the Nord Sample Library.

spookyman wrote:It's impossible to have a Minimoog-like bass sound on the lower part and a Prophet-5 brass sound on the upper part of the keyboard.

You can't assign two samples to two panels... But.. You CAN play multiple samples if you assign the sounds to keyboardzones using the Sample Editor.

If you want to use the preset sounds it requires resampling though...
So if you (re)sample a Minimoog-like bass sound and assign it to the lower part and (re)sample a Prophet-5 brass sound and assign it to the upper part of the keyboard, using the Sample Editor, you WILL be able to play more than one synth sound in one program.

That's correct. It takes a little bit more time to do it, but it's a good way to have multiple samples on a Nord Electro.

spookyman wrote:That's correct. It takes a little bit more time to do it, but it's a good way to have multiple samples on a Nord Electro.

A little more time ... understatement of the year. There is no way in Nord Sample editor to use pre existing nord samples and assign them to different key ranges merging to a new sample. Please prove me wrong. THAT would be quick.

Dreamer wrote:

spookyman wrote:That's correct. It takes a little bit more time to do it, but it's a good way to have multiple samples on a Nord Electro.

A little more time ... understatement of the year. There is no way in Nord Sample editor to use pre existing nord samples and assign them to different key ranges merging to a new sample. Please prove me wrong. THAT would be quick.

Using an autosampler tool to sample the existing sounds off the keyboard takes a few minutes...

You can easily record your sounds using a free tool like Audacity and save it as a 44.1kHz - 16bit wav file.
You can import those files into the Nord Sample editor.

It does indeed really take only a few minutes more than if it were possible to directly add a Nord sample.