Use midi to swap keyboards bottom to top and top to bottom

[Jetrocker]

I'm what you call a midiot, so sorry if this question is a little in left field.  I know you can control one synth with another synth's keyboard, but is it possible to literally "swap" keyboards such that what is coming out of the top board is played on the bottom keyboard and what is coming out of the bottom board is played on the top's keyboard?  The reason I'm asking is that the horn lead I want to play has the right sound from the bottom board, but the keyboard action is faster on the top and my "normal" playing routine is right hand on top, left hand on bottom.  I have a Kronos 2 on top and a Nord Stage 3 compact on the bottom.  Thanks for any input. 

[Tusker]

Can you find the Local Off settings on both keyboards? (Probably in Global => MIDI in the Korg, Somewhere in the MIDI menu in the Nord) Then you can run midi cables out-to-in and out-to-in. At least that's I've done it. The problem for me is that I often forget I did these crazy things. Later, I am scratching my head wondering why my keyboard has stopped working, lol.

 

Somebody will probably come by in a bit and give you a better answer. 

[The Real MC]

I do that with a programmable MIDI matrix.  In the studio, the MOTU interfaces can do that.  On stage I use the old JL Cooper MSB Plus.

[stoken6]

On the Nord, you can use an Extern section to play the Kronos. For the converse, set up the Nord onboard sound to respond to MIDI, but not locally (the section will be active, but none of the zone LEDs will be lit). Set MIDI channels appropriately, and cross-connect MIDI OUT->IN and IN->OUT across the two boards.

 

Cheers Mike.

[AnotherScott]

Tusker's answer is probably the simplest way to do it. That approach will work with most boards that have 5-pin MIDI jacks and have not had their default MIDI settings altered, though there are exceptions (but it should be fine with your Kronos/Nord combo). But if you're not doing an entire gig that way, but rather want to go back and forth between which board's sounds are being triggered from which board's keys for a given song (or a given part or a song), having to alter those Local On/Off settings and physical MIDI connections in real-time at the gig is not the way you want to go.

 

More commonly, Mike's approach would be preferable. It will take more work to set up (numerous settings that will have to be checked/changed on both boards), but once you set it up, every time you select a particular patch on one of your boards, the information for which "local" and which "remote" sounds you do or do not want playing from that board's keys will be stored/recalled within that patch. In your case, if you want the Nord to play a Kronos sound, as Mike said, you's use the Nord's EXTERN section and save those settings within a Nord program (i.e. you'd have a Nord program that would be set up to do nothing but play a Kronos sound... though there's no reason you couldn't have it set up to split/layer that Kronos sound with an internal Nord sound as well, if you wanted that). On the Kronos, you'd set up a Combi with one of its timbres set to EXT (or EX2), and similarly, that Kronos combi could then play only that Nord sound, or a combination of that Nord sound with one more more internal Kronos sounds, split/layered.

 

And then picking up from what Real MC said, you can also do this by connecting both boards to an external routing device. There are programmable hardware boxes, or you can do it with a smartphone or tablet or computer running an appropriate app.

[Stokely]

I wanted to do that, and maybe a bit further:

I had a Yamaha Modx (with a built-in audio interface) with midi over usb controlling B-3X on an ipad.
My top keyboard was a Novation Summit, and I wanted the ability to play B-3X from the Summit for some songs.  Additionally, I wanted the ability to play Modx sounds from the Summit, or Summit sounds from the Modx.   I also wanted to (most of the time) play each keyboard normally.

I found a solution but ended up not gigging with it because it seemed fiddly.   I had both keyboards and the ipad connected to a usb hub.  On the Ipad, I ran "Midiflow", which is an app that can do a number of things including route midi around to any connected devices.

I had to turn local off on the Summit, it's a global setting.  The Modx is way more flexible, having zones per patch that can be local on/off or external.

It all worked, but as I say I ended up wanting to keep things simple.  My ipad didn't have a ton of glitches at gigs, but it did have a few, albeit temporary ones.  I've gone to a single keyboard, ultra-fast setup right now but maybe I'll swing back to wanting more complexity again     In this case, the fallback option if something stopped working would be to simply use each keyboard normally (after turning local back on with the Summit) so not a huge deal.   I also didn't like Midiflow's lack of set list options--I would have used it to also send patch changes per song but it only had one alphabetical list of songs.  I could have used it but I was hoping I could build a custom set list with it.