NS3: Controlling External Prog Changes

[THouse]

Hi all-- trying to streamline my rig with regard to controlling program changes, but running into a couple of brick walls.

First, I wanted to control the secondary board by song, rather than by program. Logic being that I might have lots of songs that have piano on NS3, but a different patch on the secondary board. I don't want to have to create 10 variations of the same piano patch, and then changes have to be manually duplicated, etc., etc., etc. It appears that there is no way to save an Extern PC command to the song, only to the program. Am I correct in this?

Second, I go to my trusty stage tablet. I don't want to have to connect each keyboard to the tablet, I want to use that beautiful Midi Thru capacity. But my interpretation of the manual is that I can only use "soft Thru" to pass messages through if they're on the same channel as one of the panels, which seems to defeat the purpose. If (for example) I set Panel A to channel 1, and Panel B to channel 2, then I want my secondary board set to channel 3 so I can send unique PCs to each. But it seems like this isn't how it works? Rather I need to send the secondary board commands on either 1 or 2, in which case how do I differentiate them from the PCs that I'm sending to the NS3?

The only alternative I see is separate midi-to-USB connections for each keyboard, which--- okay. But seems pretty silly given the concept of NS3 as a "master" keyboard. Am I missing something obvious here?

Thank you!

[THouse]

NS3 isn't that bad of a master keyboard: It has 2 extern layers to control 2 additional sound generators. On the other side, it's quite poor in its MIDI-thru capacities: Nothing but notes can be transmitted from it - either on one of the Panel MIDI channels or on Global MIDI channel. As far as I can see, there is no way to use a NS3 within a daisy chain controlling another sound generator's program settings from an external tablet.

From the Nord perspective, it's up to you to provide the gear (MIDI controller) to address both your NS3 and another board from one tablet.