Ask Patch Foundry: Why the Reversed Modulation Wheel?

I got this email from Mark this week:

“Hey man, I bought the cover band collection. Very nice work. I learned a ton from looking at how you laid out each song and am doing the same for my own original songs.

The only funky thing is the organ volume on the expression wheel is reversed compared to every other program I've seen and reversed compared to all the volume faders on the organ.

is there a way to reverse that in the program easily?

-Mark “

Here’s my response:

Thanks for reaching out! Yes, you’re not crazy- the modulation wheel is reversed, and unfortunately it’s on purpose. Let me explain. 😂 

The way the modulation matrix works on a Nord lets you quickly assign any parameter to the wheel OR expression pedal. If you assign them both to the expression and mod wheel, it jumps to double the volume. Frustrating. 

I personally don’t use the mod wheel, and build all my patches around the concept of sweeping lots of sounds in and out with an expression pedal. But I know a lot of people use the mod wheel. 

So when I began releasing commercial patches I found a compromise. If I mapped the mod wheel in reverse of the expression pedal, it allowed people to use either the mod wheel or the expression pedal interchangeably without mapping hundreds of parameters. So that’s the unhappy compromise I made going forward to allow both playing styles 😂

Unfortunately it’s a little tedious to change the mod wheel to operate in the correct direction. To do it, you’ll need to: 

1. Remove all mod mappings by holding down all three buttons on the mod mappings section in the middle of the keyboard. 

 2. Hold down “mod wheel” and map it to: 

• organ volume on Panel A and Panel B

• cutoff on each synth section patch on Panel A and Panel B

3. You’d then need to manually do this for all the patches you have. 

Also, you’d lose the expression pedal mappings when you do this, so there’s that. 

Hope that makes sense, and appreciate you reaching out! 

Eric