Nord User Forum

Want to set up my Digitakt with my Nord Drum 3 - with one dedicated midi channel per track on the Digitakt AND The Nord Drum. Works fine in one direction, which is the digitakt sending midi to the nord drum. But not the other! The Nord drum does not seem to send any midi per channel, even though I have assigned each pad to one channel. Any ideas?'

MY SETTINGS
1. The Nord Drum Midi settings, Globlal: 0ff
2. The Nord Drum Midi settings, per pad.
Pad 1: Channel 9,
Pad 2: Channel 10 ....and so on...

Hi hummelman,

That is correct, the individual MIDI channels are mainly* there to control sound parameters of the 3p, it's one direction only. The 3p sends MIDI notes on the 'global' MIDI channel, a note is coupled with a drum channel (drum sound) you can set which note is coupled to which drum channel, your drum pattern in the sequencer should therefore comprise of these 6 notes only. If the 3p receives these notes on the same (global) MIDI channel the corresponding drum channels will be triggered. *When you're sending MIDI notes on the individual MIDI channels, the note will determine the pitch of the corresponding drum sound, and the MIDI channel determines which drum channel is addressed.

Hope this helps,
Albert

wartaler wrote:Hi hummelman,

That is correct, the individual MIDI channels are mainly* there to control sound parameters of the 3p, so it's one direction only. The 3p only sends MIDI notes on the 'global' MIDI channel, a note is coupled with a drum channel (drum sound) you can set which note is coupled to which drum channel, your drum pattern in the sequencer should therefore comprise of these 6 motes only. If the 3p receives these notes on the same (global) MIDI channel the corresponding channels will be triggered. *When you're sending MIDI notes on the individual MIDI channels, the note will determine the pitch of the corresponding drum sound, and the MIDI channel determines which drum channel is addressed.

Hope this helps,
Albert

Thanks a lot for a quick and thorough reply. So if the question is "can I send midi on six different channels from the 3p, one from each pad" then the answer is "no"?

And then, should I invest in an old ipad and use the nord beat app as sequencer for the 3p instead? What I am after is the ability to record what I am playing on the 3p pads to a sequencer and have the sequencer play this back, as part of my live set. WITH the ability to mute for instance the recording of the kick (for example in a break) and then unmute it again. Hope u get what I am after

hummelman wrote:Thanks a lot for a quick and thorough reply. So if the question is "can I send midi on six different channels from the 3p, one from each pad" then the answer is "no"?

Yep, the answer is no..

hummelman wrote:And then, should I invest in an old ipad and use the nord beat app as sequencer for the 3p instead? What I am after is the ability to record what I am playing on the 3p pads to a sequencer and have the sequencer play this back, as part of my live set. WITH the ability to mute for instance the recording of the kick (for example in a break) and then unmute it again. Hope u get what I am after

Well, you'll need a sequencer or app that is capable of recording a polyphonic MIDI track, the MIDI tracks on Digitakt are polyphonic, but only 4 notes, 2 less than you need. Nord Beat does not record MIDI, you can only enter a pattern of notes on the iPad screen, but there are other apps that will record and loop, I would first explore which apps would suit your needs, watch a lot of Youtube demo's and tutorials, an iPad is great but I wouldn't buy it just for that purpose. Also check compatibility of older iPads with current iPadOS, I'm on an iPad Air 2 from 2014, still fast enough for a lot of stuff, but they will possibly drop support and no longer provide this model with OS updates next year, which means less and less (new) apps will be compatible in the years that follow.

Cheers,
Albert

If the ability to do this is important to you, I'm not sure but I think something like the Bome Box (a midi translator / mangler) could do this.

Yes, good point, with the bome box you'll probably also need their MIDI translator pro software (not included) to program some 'processing rules', so check if you can build a processing rule that sends a note on a MIDI channel depending on which note it receives from the 3p, I just checked their website, found out you can actually download a free trial of the software here: https://www.bome.com/products/miditranslator so perhaps you can check it out even without the unit itself..
Albert

As for the Nord Drum 2 it is actually possible, at least for the latest OS version (3.0). Going into the note menu, the lowest 16 notes, from 0-15 will send out MIDI channels 1-16. Found this out randomly, and have been looking for a way to do exactly this. Seems like this isn't documented.

Wow, interesting!

Hi Guys, i going to buy the Nord drum 3p...i search all the info about it and is the best option for now...
i read this post, and i not understand very well sorry...this is the question...can i put for example (channel 1 midi on ND3 global out) and the the same on digitakt and the six pads from ND3 trigger 6 channel on digitakt? with the same notes? for example pad 1 C# (nd3) and track 1 C# (Kick digitakt) ?? and playing the sounds/samples from Digitakt on the pads ND...

Cheers
Lucare

Hi, so I had the same problem as everyone else here: I wanted to record pads 1-6 of my Nord Drum 3P via MIDI channel 10-16 into 6 tracks of my sequencer (in my case a lovely Polyend Seq), but the Nord Drum 3P only sends MIDI Out Notes on a single channel, so I recorded all 6 pads into a single track which was quite a mess.

So what I wanted was

- change "MIDI channel 16, Note On, Note value #60" to "MIDI channel 10, Note On, Note value 60"
- change "MIDI channel 16, Note On, Note value #62" to "MIDI channel 11, Note On, Note value 62"
- change "MIDI channel 16, Note On, Note value #64" to "MIDI channel 12, Note On, Note value 64"
- change "MIDI channel 16, Note On, Note value #65" to "MIDI channel 13, Note On, Note value 65"
- change "MIDI channel 16, Note On, Note value #67" to "MIDI channel 14, Note On, Note value 66"
- change "MIDI channel 16, Note On, Note value #69" to "MIDI channel 15, Note On, Note value 67"

and then the same for Note Off, as this is what the Nord Drum 3P does - found that out with the Mac app "MIDI Monitor": https://www.snoize.com/midimonitor/
[note that the PITCH of the note is transmitted in another MIDI value, so you can still change the pitch in the Nord Drum 3P and send it and play it back]

Here's how I achieved that:

1. bought an Event Processor Plus http://www.midisolutions.com/prodepp.htm from MIDI Solutions and a $20 USB-to-MIDI cable from Amazon
(the Note On / Note off commands above are already 12 commands, the Event Processor non-plus can handle only 10 while the Plus handles up to 32)
2. connected my Macbook with the cable and plugged it into MIDI In of the Event Processor Plus … but the cable couldn't power the device, so I also
3. connected MIDI Out from the Nord Drum 3P to MIDI Out of the Event Processor Plus to power it
4. selected the above "Map a MIDI Event" settings in MIDI Solution's free app http://www.midisolutions.com/progtool.htm and sent them to the device … remember to change the setting numbers, here's my code: 5. if you do everything right, the device will flicker for 1 second after EACH transmitted command. If you do it wrong, it will at the most go dark for a fraction of a second
6. I could then unplug the device and use it directly with the Nord Drum

So now I'm recording my 6 pads through 6 channels into 6 sequencer tracks, mission accomplished

Programming
Noteworthy is what didn´t work to do the programming - apparently some instruments / keyboards / sequencers change or withold bits of the transmitted MIDI programming:

Mac --- usb ---> Arturia Keystep 32 --- midi ---> Event Processor Plus
Mac --- usb ---> Polyend Seq --- midi ---> Kenton Thru 12 --- midi ---> Event Processor Plus
Mac --- usb ---> Argon8M --- midi ---> Event Processor Plus <--- midi power --- Nord Drum 3P
Mac --- usb midi cable ---> Event Processor Plus <--- midi power --- Nord Drum 3P

Everyday use
Nord Drum 3P --- midi ---> Event Processor Plus --- midi ---> sequencer
Nord Drum 3P --- midi ---> Event Processor Plus --- midi ---> Arturia Keystep 32 in Thru Mode --- midi ---> sequencer

Hope this helps
Still don't understand why I need to buy a 169 € MIDI translator while the myriads of MIDI Out problem posts in this forum could ALL be solved with a simple firmware update!

Note (edited): One bummer is though that the MIDI Solutions Software Tool is only working up to Mac OS 10.14 Mojave, not Catalina or newer. It does work with even OS 10.6 that I have on a very old Mac mini that I use as a server and for network backups.