Splits and layering - how many sounds?

[+Tom+]

Hi,

I'm considering getting an Electro 6D 73, in no small part because the keybed is the best of anything I've tried so far. However, I've got a concern that the Electro might not be able to do what I want...

I play in a small band, where the keyboard often ends up filling in several gaps in the sound. Fundamentally, my question is "when the keyboard is split, can the left and right halves of the keyboard have a different sound from the same engine?".
For example, left hand plays a bass guitar sound, while the right hand plays a string section sound. Both would obviously come from the Sample Synth, and from reading the manual it's not clear to me that this is possible...
Some other example use cases:
LH: some sort of Hammond; RH: some sort of Vox (this one might be possible as a split manual?)
LH: bass sample synth; RH: piano plus strings

My examples are slightly arbitrary - it's really about getting more than one sound of any given type...

Thanks,
Tom

[ggoebel]

Hi Tom,

this is not possible on the Electro series. You can always play only one sound per engine, except organ, where you can play to different sounds of the same organ model (upper and lower with different drawbar settings, but not e.g. B3 and VOX).

To do so, you may switch to Piano (5 or 6), where you have two engines of sample synth and piano, but no organ. Or to a Stage.

[cphollis]

Hi,

I'm considering getting an Electro 6D 73, in no small part because the keybed is the best of anything I've tried so far. However, I've got a concern that the Electro might not be able to do what I want...

I play in a small band, where the keyboard often ends up filling in several gaps in the sound. Fundamentally, my question is "when the keyboard is split, can the left and right halves of the keyboard have a different sound from the same engine?".
For example, left hand plays a bass guitar sound, while the right hand plays a string section sound. Both would obviously come from the Sample Synth, and from reading the manual it's not clear to me that this is possible...
Some other example use cases:
LH: some sort of Hammond; RH: some sort of Vox (this one might be possible as a split manual?)
LH: bass sample synth; RH: piano plus strings

My examples are slightly arbitrary - it's really about getting more than one sound of any given type...

Thanks,
Tom

Welcome to the forum! But as said above, it gets down to the number of sound engines. The Electro 6 has one each of organ, piano and sampler. So you could split piano and organ, but not piano and piano -- unless you used the sample engine to play a piano sound.

The Stage 4 has two organ engines, two piano engines and three real synth/sample engines. Also, the splits/layers are more flexible. Each piano and synth engine has its own FX chain (the organ shares one) -- which is more useful than it sounds.

I play a NS4C on top with a weighted controller underneath using the "AUX KBD" function. Not only does that give me both a weighted and unweighted keybed, there's lots of real estate to set up splits so it doesn't get so crowded.

For a given song, the top keyboard might be split between a synth bass low and B3 higher up. The bottom would be a rich piano sound w/pads and the upper keys reserved for a horn section. That's a lot of firepower in a single program. I've also made use of the commercial cover packs as shortcut to get signature sounds which has worked out well.

I've always said the Electro was the gateway drug to the Stage

[maxpiano]

As cphollis said + I add that on NE6D Synth you can also use a popular workaround: prepare a pre-split user sample to do the trick (but you cannot edit compiled NSMP samples, so you have to resample them and then work with Nord Sample Editor to build the split).

Anyway, bottom line if you need to have multiple synth parts often and not just sometimes (by exception), then the NE is not your keyboard, NS is (at least in the Nord product line of stage pianos/keys).

[+Tom+]

Thank you all for your replies, they've given me a better understanding of how Nord approach things. I'm coming from a simple "home keyboard" background, so there are a lot of new ideas for me to absorb. I'd never have thought of maxpiano's idea of creating a custom pre-split sample, but I can see how that would work, and might be enough - at least for the sound combinations I tend to lean towards.
I think cphollis might be right about gateway drugs though... the NS4C does sound much more like my ideal. Previously I would have said it was far too expensive, now I'm thinking about shuffling money. Gateway drug indeed!

It's interesting that there doesn't seem to be anything else out there with the immediacy of a Nord which is also significantly "better" in terms of mixing samples. Yes, the YC73 has two "synth" engines which gives a little more scope, but it's not fundamentally different in terms of ability to mix and match. Otherwise, it seems to be more synth workstations with very complicated menu systems.

I need to do some thinking about how much flexibility I genuinely need, and how much I want that money in my hands rather than Nord's!