benj00
Joined: Apr 02, 2010 Posts: 3 Location: USA
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Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 12:05 pm Post subject:
Nord Piano Issues Subject description: Nord piano |
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Hey fellow keyboardists,
I wanted to share my unique solution to a recent problem I encountered while trying to play a GB gig with my Nord stage. The situation was essentially that Nord acoustic piano sounds are not adequate for playing either solo piano, or anything where the piano is front and center. (don't ask me why, more than one fellow musician has commented on their overall crappiness) My Roland Juno DI has pretty nice piano patches, but it is only 61 non weighted keys and I also use it as my top keyboard which I find tiring to play with both hands at a higher angle.
My solution to this was to play the Roland sounds with the Nord using the External midi controller function. However I do use the Roland as a midi controller to control the Nord at times so this meant that I couldn't continue to use the Roland to play the Nord sounds. What I really wanted to be able to do was play the Roland patches with the Nord and play the Nord patches with the Roland. *A note here, I know it would be possible to find another keyboard like a motif and change my rig around, but that would (a) be expensive and (b) possibly involve making my rig bulkier which I didn't want to do either. I am also really attached to the Nord organ sounds and onboard effects.
The way I found to do this was actually pretty simple but it did involve using the desktop editor for the Roland as opposed to editing using the small screen on the keyboard itself. On most keyboard/workstations like the Motif/Juno, etc it is possible to create a "performance" with 16 tracks (ie patches) that can be accessed in a live performance to change patches quickly and also to control from another keyboard via midi channel (of which they are 16). Now in the Roland (and I assuming you can do this with most keyboards) you can set whether the patch will receive midi, and also what channel it will transmit on. Now in the performance I set up for the Roland, I made sure that the acoustic piano patch was the only sound set to receive any midi signals and then I set the first 6 channels to transmit on the same 6 channels that I set the Nord on. (Panels A/B each have organ, pianos, synths = 6 different channels to access each sound) I believe depending on the keyboard you may also have to turn off local control as well. Anyway you can also set keyboard range in the editor for each "track", which can be handy when dealing with a smaller keyboard controller (ie 61 keys and under). So now when I access that performance, I can scroll quickly through the first 6 channels to get the Nord sound I want ( you can also enter it numerically) while playing piano.
The end result is that I can now play decent piano sounds with the Nord, but I can still access the Nord's internal sounds on the fly with the Roland acting as both a sound module and midi controller. Obviously this means that I can play any of the Roland's sounds, not just the acoustic piano. Another way of looking at this, in a simpler fashion, is that I now essentially have two sound modules and two midi controllers to play them with. Anyway, just thought I would share if anyone is interested.
~Ben
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