Nord User Forum

Hi everyone,

Im brand new on this forum, very interested by Nord keyboard for many years and now the time has come : I have enough money saved to acquire a (used) Nord Electro I'll go for NE5D, very soon, just a matter of time now

I have a question, I searched over the forum and found some answers, Ive also read the manual but it's not very clear in my brain since I don't have the NE5 under my hands..

It concerns split functions and scenario 3, if I've understood correctly.

If I connect a midi keyboard to the NE5 :

Would I be able to play, for example, the upper part (Sample mode) on an external keyboard and play the lower part (maybe piano) on the NE5 ? This "Scenario 3" is not very clear for me on that point : does engaging scenario 3 means no sound from NE5 keybed, everything remains controlled by the MIDI controller ?

Will I be able to use pitch-bend wheel on the upper part with my controller?

Finally, does this “Scenario 3” mode, once engaged, is applied to all presets or can it be assigned to a specific preset?
For example:
PRESET A : split piano on lower part, sample on upper part < NO SCENARIO 3
PRESET B : piano on lower part played on the NE5, sample upper part played on my midi controller < SCENARIO 3 ENGAGED
PRESET C : same as preset A, everything played on the NE5
Etc..

Thank you !

Hello PepeJango

and a very warm welcome to this wonderful forum of nord enthusiasts, I guess you‘ll like it here. Always helpful and friendly.

As far as your questions are concerned:

PRESET A: if I understand this right you‘d like to play a piano section sound with your left and a sample synth sound with your right hand, right? Just set the sounds for part lower and part upper and set your desired KB SPLIT point.

PRESET B: take PRESET A as a base, adjust MIDI channels in the MIDI menu to different ones for upper and lower and then set your KB SPLIT point to MIDI Split Upper Receive. Your additional keyboard then plays the upper sound, and the sound even reacts to pitch bend commands from the 2nd board.

PRESET C: I don‘t get the difference to PRESET A, can you please explain?

You can save individual programs with different KB Split settings, but the MIDI channels can only be set globally which is once for the entire keyboard.

Good luck and cheers from Germany

Edit: And don‘t forget - the manual is your friend
https://www.nordkeyboards.com/legacy-pr ... llToTabs=1

Fellow Nord enthusiasts

This forum has so often been an invaluable source of help but seems to fail me now.
I am connecting a quite basic Yamaha-Portable-Grand-Np-30 as second manual to my Electro 6D through MIDI and get the following unexpected behaviour:
When playing without split function, I hear the Nord sounds when playing Yamaha (expected) but when selecting a program with KBD split the KBD zone select LED assigned to lower switches from green to red when I select "EXT KBD to low" and I hear the sound signed to the upper half (i.e. the NORD itself) when playing the Yamaha.
I am not a MIDI expert but looking at the mapping of the Yamaha, both appear to have channels 1-16 https://www.manualslib.com/manual/47407 ... =32#manual

It appears to me that the MIDI setting is somehow wrong. What does that red KBD Zone LED mean? I could not find anything about it. With many thanks, Martin

Your Yamaha is sending Midi on the Electro's Global channel. You need to change it so it is sending on the Electro's External Kbd channel.

You will then be able to play the Lo sounds (red LED) on your Yamaha and the Up sounds from the Electro when in Ext Kbd to Lo mode.

Thanks. That did the trick!!!

Martin1980 wrote: ↑11 Jul 2025, 23:01 Fellow Nord enthusiasts

This forum has so often been an invaluable source of help but seems to fail me now.

It is not the forum that fails to help (also because this topic has been treated in the past), but not reading the manuals and understanding MIDI that can cause problems; if you want to take the maximum from your keyboards, using MIDI, you cannot avoid that. Of course if you ask here someone will help you, but what if the answer comes late or you need to change something on the fly, maybe just before a gig?

Investing some time on knowing your keyboards better is always time well spent viewtopic.php?t=26369