From Gmarsh4719@aol.com Sat Apr 09 06:25:38 2005
Subject:Re: Electro Questions


Hi, Mike

First, a quick plug for the yahoo group NordElectro, if you havent
already heard about it. It's specific to Nord Electro owners, so
theres a higher concentration of experience there. (not to mention,
they might try to steer you into an XK3 here in clonewheel :-)

Anyway, your questions are phrased in a way that don't make a great
deal of sense to me, but here is a quick 'essay' that may address you
concerns:

First, the Nord Electro 2 is not poly timbral (only plays organ or
piano/EP sounds at a time, not both like the new Stage)

The MIDI input will allow you to play either 1. Any of the piano/EP
sounds if the midi channel of your external controller keyboard is
set to the same as the selected UPPER channel input of the Nord, or
2. the LOWER manual of the organ section if your controller is
sending midi channel corresponding to the selected LOWER channel
number.

If you have your controller keyboard sending on the upper channel
number, and have an organ patch selected (including any split, etc.)
it will play that. The Nords' keyboard will play the same patch
unless you have the local keyboard turned off (LocalOff) The built-in
keyboard on the Nord can never be exclusively playing the lower
manual of the organ (as part of a split, yes, but basically, any
external keyboard is always considered the 'lower manual' and the
built in one is the 'upper manual'

I mention this distinction because as you probably realize, on a
Hammond, only the upper manual has percussion.

Here is how upper/lower manual is implemented on the Nord Electro2:
The Upper/Lower manual button will toggle the drawbar/chorus display
between showing the settings of upper and lower respectively. The
chorus can be set individually per manual. So if you are in split
mode, you get a few octaves of lower manual on the left (which is
octave switchable through the full range) and a few more octaves on
the right of upper manual, also octave switchable. So if you are
playing on the local kbd only, you use the manual select button to
switch views between upper and lower, if you are using an external
kbd for lower manual, the same applies, you toggle back and forth
between display of the upper and lower settings.

MIDI control: The Nord Electro2 is admittedly weak in master
controller functinality. If it says it sends 0-47, thats it! You'd
either need to move the patches you want on the ME to the lower
numbers, or get an external midi mapper box inline to translate the
patch change messages. In general, you cannot select any niceties of
midi output like 'do not send patch change info' or such, it just
spews out whatever it generates. I find that to be kind of a hassle
on the few occasions I use the Nord kbd to control my PC2r kurz, you
start tweaking a drawbar, and the CC# is used for something else on
the PC2, so like the arpegiator will start in, or something. Don't
count on using the Nord's midi output for anything useful. Just buy a
cheap(er) dumb midi controller for your module!

That said, its is an incredible board, never ceases to impress me!

Greg

>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]