Nord User Forum

Good point. No further comment.

sentionaut wrote:It sounds like I am on the right track then. I don’t think I’ll need much more than the stock synth sounds on the P5 as I’ll still have my OB6 that is providing synth duties. I also have an Elektron Analog Four, so I’ve got a lot of synth ground covered I think.
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Hello, and welcome to the Forum as well. I'm sure there are many opinions in the Forum about this, however I thought it might be helpful just to note how easy it has been for me to work on songs by having the synth integrated into my "piano" keyboard. The flexibility afforded by the morphing capability in the Stage 3 would allow you to easily manipulate various keyboard parameters simultaneously, such as bringing piano, organ, and/or synth parts in and out while playing, even turning one up with the control pedal while turning one down. With AfterTouch integrated into the keyboard (not available on the Nord Piano), you could manipulate keyboard parameters while playing the piano as well, including synths via MIDI - the Extern section is perfect for integrating your other synths. Along with many other programs provided by members of the Forum, I have quite a few posted at nord-stage-3-programs-ns3p-ns3pb-files- ... 15748.html if you would like to get an idea of what the Stage 3 offers. It's something to think about. Good luck to you!

WannitBBBad wrote:

sentionaut wrote:It sounds like I am on the right track then. I don’t think I’ll need much more than the stock synth sounds on the P5 as I’ll still have my OB6 that is providing synth duties. I also have an Elektron Analog Four, so I’ve got a lot of synth ground covered I think.
...

Hello, and welcome to the Forum as well. I'm sure there are many opinions in the Forum about this, however I thought it might be helpful just to note how easy it has been for me to work on songs by having the synth integrated into my "piano" keyboard. The flexibility afforded by the morphing capability in the Stage 3 would allow you to easily manipulate various keyboard parameters simultaneously, such as bringing piano, organ, and/or synth parts in and out while playing, even turning one up with the control pedal while turning one down. With AfterTouch integrated into the keyboard (not available on the Nord Piano), you could manipulate keyboard parameters while playing the piano as well, including synths via MIDI - the Extern section is perfect for integrating your other synths. Along with many other programs provided by members of the Forum, I have quite a few posted at nord-stage-3-programs-ns3p-ns3pb-files- ... 15748.html if you would like to get an idea of what the Stage 3 offers. It's something to think about. Good luck to you!

Hello and thank you for your thoughts. I had considered the Stage 3 but ended up buying a Piano 5 as it seemed to fit my needs a bit better and I got a deal on it that made it a good deal cheaper than the Stage 3. I do like to get hands on with my synths, the OB6 and Analog Four. The lack of after touch on the P5 is probably the main downside I can see in using it to control these synths, I'm still thinking about the best way for me to set it all up together.

As an organist who in later year learned to play the piano (yes, it's that different), I highly recommend learning on a piano action keyboard. It will be easier going from piano action to organ action. I recently sold my Stage 3 Compact so I could replace it with a Piano 5 and I'm very pleased with it.

sentionaut wrote:Hello and thank you for your thoughts. I had considered the Stage 3 but ended up buying a Piano 5 as it seemed to fit my needs a bit better and I got a deal on it that made it a good deal cheaper than the Stage 3. I do like to get hands on with my synths, the OB6 and Analog Four. The lack of after touch on the P5 is probably the main downside I can see in using it to control these synths, I'm still thinking about the best way for me to set it all up together.

I'm sorry I missed your earlier post on your Piano 5 purchase - congratulations, you're a Nord owner!

WannitBBBad wrote:

sentionaut wrote:Hello and thank you for your thoughts. I had considered the Stage 3 but ended up buying a Piano 5 as it seemed to fit my needs a bit better and I got a deal on it that made it a good deal cheaper than the Stage 3. I do like to get hands on with my synths, the OB6 and Analog Four. The lack of after touch on the P5 is probably the main downside I can see in using it to control these synths, I'm still thinking about the best way for me to set it all up together.

I'm sorry I missed your earlier post on your Piano 5 purchase - congratulations, you're a Nord owner!

Thank you! I am very excited, it should arrive next week.

sentionaut wrote:Thank you! I am very excited, it should arrive next week.

Regarding your next challenge of sampling your Mellotron Micro using the Nord Sample Editor 4, my approach is to record individual notes with a clean, silent gap between them, save it as a WAV file, and import it into the NSE4. Though the NSE4 will allow you to record directly into it, I prefer to sample using audio software such as Audacity and have a WAV file for future use with other software. It's preferable to record without effects that can be added later by your keyboard (Chorus, Reverb,..), among other benefits it makes it easier to loop your sample and keep the file size small. For the Mellotron samples you are going to make, I would suggest making a "master" WAV file with every note played for a long duration (original Mellotron tapes were approximately 8 seconds). Once you import the file into the NSE4 you'll have the option of deleting which note samples you don't want to use for your NSMP4 file and where you want each sample to loop to keep the file size small (can be done with all at once to save time). Your NSMP4 file size will depend on how many individual samples are saved for the final product and the duration of the samples kept. Good luck to you.

WannitBBBad wrote:

sentionaut wrote:Thank you! I am very excited, it should arrive next week.

Regarding your next challenge of sampling your Mellotron Micro using the Nord Sample Editor 4, my approach is to record individual notes with a clean, silent gap between them, save it as a WAV file, and import it into the NSE4. Though the NSE4 will allow you to record directly into it, I prefer to sample using audio software such as Audacity and have a WAV file for future use with other software. It's preferable to record without effects that can be added later by your keyboard (Chorus, Reverb,..), among other benefits it makes it easier to loop your sample and keep the file size small. For the Mellotron samples you are going to make, I would suggest making a "master" WAV file with every note played for a long duration (original Mellotron tapes were approximately 8 seconds). Once you import the file into the NSE4 you'll have the option of deleting which note samples you don't want to use for your NSMP4 file and where you want each sample to loop to keep the file size small (can be done with all at once to save time). Your NSMP4 file size will depend on how many individual samples are saved for the final product and the duration of the samples kept. Good luck to you.

Thanks for that information, that is very helpful.

I watched a couple of videos on the sample editor and it seemed like a .wav file is saved in the sample editor folder when you record into it. That would save me making the file in Logic and then importing it. And yes, I for sure won't apply any effects.

Just one question, when you say to record each note, is that to say every note on the Mellotron which I think is 73? So the wave file would be 73 notes of 8 seconds with gaps in between? Or every note just being the 12 notes in one octave and the sampler then transposed it to the rest of the keyboard?

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sentionaut wrote:Thanks for that information, that is very helpful.

I watched a couple of videos on the sample editor and it seemed like a .wav file is saved in the sample editor folder when you record into it. That would save me making the file in Logic and then importing it. And yes, I for sure won't apply any effects.

Just one question, when you say to record each note, is that to say every note on the Mellotron which I think is 73? So the wave file would be 73 notes of 8 seconds with gaps in between? Or every note just being the 12 notes in one octave and the sampler then transposed it to the rest of the keyboard?

Good to know that the NSE4 will save recorded samples as a WAV file - I'll have to try that. Regarding what notes to save, the master file could potentially have up to 88 notes for the duration needed, but you would typically create a master WAV file using all the notes in the useful, playable range of the instrument desired. A piano could be all 88 notes whereas a flute would be much less. After the master is created, you can choose which notes you'd rather be interpolated for the NSMP4 file you are creating without losing the content of the master WAV file. As interpolation is slowing down or speeding up a base note to get it to the correct pitch for another, you would find for example that a C note with a nice, slow vibrato in it would have a much faster vibrato if that sampled C note was interpolated for the E note above it, so you might end up keeping more notes to have a good NSMP4 of a violin with vibrato, than the same instrument without vibrato. The bottom line for me - very little time is needed to create a really good master WAV file capturing all of the notes of an instrument - you won't regret it. You have the opportunity in NSE4 to use less notes when putting together your NSNP4 file to save sample space, but years from now when you have four times the sample memory in a future generation Nord, you'll be able to go back to that master WAV file to create an even better Nord Sample. Good luck!

sentionaut wrote:Just one question, when you say to record each note, is that to say every note on the Mellotron which I think is 73? So the wave file would be 73 notes of 8 seconds with gaps in between? Or every note just being the 12 notes in one octave and the sampler then transposed it to the rest of the keyboard?

That question is somewhat surprising. Of course, you may leave out some notes that would be transposed by NSE4: But it wouldn't be a good idea to sample all notes of one octave and then spread the samples over the full keyboard - just imagine recording a violin and transpose it 2 octaves down: It wouldn't sound like a double bass. If you want to save space and time, rather sample every 3rd note over the full keyboard range and just transpose neighbouring notes.

On the other hand: You are going to produce nsmp4 samples for your NP5. Which support a round robin mechanism. Would a mellotron sound benefit from multiple samples for round robin? Probably not so much... I'm not sure. That would be an interesting question to me. If so, just duplicate the middle range of the given sound type where you play most of the time to save space.