Nord User Forum

I am now the proud owner of an NS4. When I got my electro several years ago, one of the first things I did was delete all the factory presets as it is very easy to create my own. Now that I have the stage, I am thinking about doing the same as I have not come across any sounds I would use out of the box.
Does anybody here actually use the presets that came with their Nord?
I guess I like the concept of a clean slate and all sounds being ones I created.

I don't use any of the preset programs either. I do think of them as great examples of various board features.

I didn't do a bulk delete, instead overwriting programs as needed, with each musical project getting a program range: "A", "B" and so on.

I do keep to mostly the stock instrument samples, though. I find the factory set surprisingly useful, and also I now have two very useful purchased preset packs that rely on them.

Same here, never use the factory programs. When I first get an instrument, I will go through them though, to see if there are any I need to investigate the programming on. All of the 200 or so programs in both my NS3 and NW2 are all custom. I also delete all of the samples I know I will never use, which saves memory space for later.

-dj

I delete everything I don't need, wiping out all the presets and generally most of the samples as well. Sometimes there are some nice presets included so it doesn't hurt to explore them, but rarely are there more than a handful at most I would want to keep.

Slightly OT: I bought my NS4 early 2023. Anyone know how different the current programs, presets and selected samples have changed since then? Regarding keeping them, I still have enough left space to keep the originals.

Well... Presets are Part of the Product you bought - you´d paid for them... Okay - sometimes there are just a Space-Filler, but (in my NORDs very) often you will figure out, that the Programmer put a lot of thoughts (and heart&soul) in... And not infrequently a Preset shows you, how to reach your desired Programming-Target... I think, generally ignore them is not the best Way... I´d gone through all of them (spend some Hours) and kept the Ones that are interesting at the End of the Memory-Store-Places... With that I found some "reference" ones, I don´t wanna miss during the day...

Don´t get me wrong - for me the Nord-Concept is that great, because of my Instrument is individual filled with MY stuff and quite different to the Rest of the same Nord-Keys around the World, but I don´t refuse a good Sound only because it´s not from me... At least I can learn how to program this or that and sometimes I simply don´t need to reinvent the (already turning) Wheel...

There is more in your Nord and creating your own stuff should be a High-Prior-Intention, but what would Music be today, if we had ignored all those StaccatoHeaven, M1-Piano, Juno-Pad, Prophet-Brass, Moog-Leads or even the original DX7-EPiano, all had come out of the Box... Sometime a Song is valuable, just because the Sound can be recognized...

Valpurgis wrote: ↑06 Jan 2025, 01:26 Slightly OT: I bought my NS4 early 2023. Anyone know how different the current programs, presets and selected samples have changed since then?

I had the second NS4 meanwhile (by any reason) and changed the Firmware with the upcoming new ones anyway of course... I can remember having seen some very small differences at the first Revisions, but nothing great... Sometimes only the storage Place had changed...

I keep all the factory presets, because it tends to save a LOT of time to look through existing programs when building a new patch, either because there's something that fits exactly, or that's close enough to be a good starting point.

I'm relatively new to the Nord Stage 4, but I had this exact same thought. Actually, I was wondering if other people made a better organization of presets (i.e. keeping similar sound-types together). I love all of the base sounds that this machine can make, but I have to say that I'm really underwhelmed by most of the presets, so I end up using the 8 live patches I use the most, but I now think that I should just learn how to create and save my own so I can organize them myself.

Feeling the same way. I have spent time going through the patches but I still hover around the same few because I have no idea where to find things on demand. E.g. making certain letter banks dedicated to types of sounds, instead of the seemingly randomness of existing.

I was thinking of making a list of classic organ, piano, and synth sounds I want to recreate and just starting from scratch focusing on those. I feel like I’ll never be happy with dozens and dozens of random patches hanging around that I probably won’t touch.