Nord User Forum

Hi, I'm thinking of buying a NL3 for live use. I looked at the Midi implementation chart for the 3 and it looks like the unit does not recognize Local on/off as a midi message. Is that true with the latest OS? I want to be able to have Ableton remotely turn local on/off depending on the song so I can either play the internal sounds or use it to trigger a plugin or other external synth.

If it does not respond to local messages via midi, I'm thinking I might just try keeping the local off and routing the midi from the keyboard into Ableton then in another track back into the NL3 when I need it but I'm not sure if it will cause too much latency. Any other ideas?

Thanks for your help!

You mean turning Local Control on and off via MIDI? I've never heard of a keyboard that does that, but that isn't saying much

When routing MIDI via Live back into the NL3, I think jitter (variation in latency) might be a bigger issue than the latency itself. If you have, for example, a solid 4 ms delay between hitting the key and hearing the sound, you're like to be able to compensate for this in your playing without even thinking about this (it might feel weird though) - the human brain never ceases to amaze me. However, if there is a lot of variation in the amount of delay, this gets much harder to do.

I would expect a setup like that to be perfectly acceptable for normal playing, but I can't really say this from experience nor do I have the figures to back that up. Routing MIDI via Live also allows you to use Live's MIDI effects and arbitrary plugins on the MIDI notes, which might be interesting.

There is a MIDI Local On/Off message, Controller 122 (hex 7A), but the Nord Lead 3 does not transmit it or respond to it. It's listed in the MIDI implementation chart under "Aux messages".

Do you know if there are Nords that respond to it? It would be bloody brilliant if you could (temporarily) turn off local control via a sequencer.

My Stage Classic doesn't seem to support it. According to the manuals, the Lead 2X, Lead 3, Stage 2 and Piano 2 don't support it either. Those are the only manuals I've got, but overall it's not looking good for the entire range. It's a shame, it would indeed be useful for us MIDI sequencing types.