Happy New Year and welcome to Yamaha Synth.

It seems like a crazy question to ask but can I transfer Voices and Performances from my Classic to the ES.
What can I do to fix this situation?

The Motif classic (2001) and the Motif ES (2003) are the first two in the Motif series timeline. What you are experiencing is that feeling that many of us musicians go through whenever we change instruments, be it an acoustic instrument or an electronic synthesizer. Our ear/brain gets used to hearing a certain 'thing' and our sense of touch and the feeling we get used to, that certain sonic response to our input. This is a well-documented thing that literally thousands of Motif classic owners went through some 12 years ago. "Where's the Power Grand?" And other favorite Voices and Performances.

After playing it, and after hearing and seeing it on stage/on tour with just about everyone, the Power Grand became extremely popular. But what you don't see (yet) is each Motif-series doubled the size of the Wave ROM of the previous model (Motif was 84MB, the ES was 175MB) and each introduced its own signature acoustic piano. (Because that was the right thing to do). The Motif could be expanded with 64MB of sample RAM; the ES could be expanded to 256MB. With the lastest model in the series, Motif XF (741MB expandable to 2GB), you can load and play all the acoustic pianos of the entire series. (Everyone has a favorite).

Instead of releasing *the same* Voices in each model, Yamaha, as a piano company, keeps pushing the envelope (no pun intended) when it came to the principal sound. And in each we don't just give you one grand piano, there is always a selection of pianos. New keyboard - new Voices - new Performances.

To answer your question (before I go any deeper into history): the ES can load the Voice, Waveform, Sample Voice Data from a Motif classic. So, yes, you can recreate the older Motif in your old Motif ES. (See page 270). Of course, Yamaha did not put the same exact Voices and Performances in the ES, of course not. Do you really need me to explain why a replacement product would have different programming from the item it is replacing?

Loading Motif classic Voices will not always translate exactly the same because the ES has newer chips. This gave it faster envelopes, new filters, better DA/AD, next generation Effects, etc. but Yamaha created a "lookup table" so that when place a Motif file in the ES, it is able to lookup the same or equivalent Waveform in the ES Wave ROM.

If you require the "Power Grand" it was provided, ...the original owner of the Motif ES received the Waveforms and Samples for those "favorite" Motif classic and S90 Voices. We also answered many requests for things like Pedal Steel guitars, and others... These were provided on one of the three CD-ROMs that came with the instrument. Page 6 of the Manual lists the ACCESSORIES that came with the ES.

See, at Yamaha we actually got out there and communicated with original Motif owners. Seriously. Doing so made us keenly aware of what we should improve and what we needed to keep (because certain Voices became "favorites" of so many musicians). And this is not to say that we can keep everyone happy. (That would be some trick).

We've heard worse complaints than yours. Yours is easy, (although it's been a good decade since I can remember going over this Motif-to-Motif ES transition) ... If you want to make the ES into a Motif classic, you can. You will need to get DIMM expansion (see page 289 in the ES Manual). The "Power Grand" is 2.4MB in size and will require DIMMs in order to load. As will all the acoustic grand pianos from the Motif classic and S90 synths provided.

The Factory provided PERFORMANCES are all in User memory and all reference PRESET Voice locations, so there is no Performance compatibility between the instruments... Because the PRESET Voices of the two keyboards are different. But you can easily build the Performances yourself. Programming Performances is child's play.

Hope that helps.

_Do you have DIMMs installed?
_Did you receive the CDROMs when you purchased your ES?
_If yes, you will find the "Power Grand" in the VOICE DATA folder in a file named PLAYERS.W7V and PLAYERS.W8V

Bad Mister,

Wow! Thanks for the quick response.
Next day you had already replied to my post on a product that is more than 10 Years old. That's outstanding.
Given the complexity of the Motif I understand the technology challenge.

I do have all the stuff including disks with the used ES7 I just purchased. Also found two 258mb PC133 chips I am giving a try.
My new sandisk Smartmedia reader just arrived.

The mission this weekend is to install memory and the Power Grand.
However my desired outcome is not to recreate the Motif Classic, but to have awesome full acoustic piano's that blow the Classic away.
I will let you know how it goes.

I see my piano desired voices as two acoustic Piano categories.
1 Piano voices that fit the grove when playing within a group.
2 Piano voices Full and rich for solo play.

Is there anything I can do to fill my “Jazz Split” organ void.
On the ES I recreated a Jazz organ split in User, Performance mode, but just does not seem to have the bite the Classic Jazz Split organ had.
On the Classic I had tweaked the jazz split into a user voice that included foot control of leslie speed.

Grazie millione!

Is there anything I can do to fill my “Jazz Split” organ void.
On the ES I recreated a Jazz organ split in User, Performance mode, but just does not seem to have the bite the Classic Jazz Split organ had.
On the Classic I had tweaked the jazz split into a user voice that included foot control of leslie speed.

There you go, lamenting over the "old bulb".
🙂

We, at Yamaha, are sure the Motif ES blows the Classic out of the water, (that's why we released it); you may take some time to come to that conclusion. Take your time.

We are also certain that the Motif XS blows the Motif ES out of the water, and the the Motif XF blows the XS out of the water. Your opinion can and may be different, but that may change over time (as I mentioned happened to literally thousands of Classic owners as time went by). You miss your favorite things - create NEW favorite things to do, you purchased a NEW keyboard. Stop looking back - that's my advice. Particularly in your case... Motif-to-Motif ES... "back to the future!"

PERFORMANCES you will need to recreate yourself. If you did programming on the Motif Classic then you know how the "Jazz Split" is made, You can load the same Voices into your "new" ES and just remake it - it is not that difficult. As to the 'bite' - that's on you. Like saying the old (blown out) light bulb was brighter than this new one... unless you can compare them A-to-B, your memory is just that this sound is not the same. Well - I wouldn't lose sleep over it. Don't blame the ES, this is on you now - you know what you want - program it!

The "old bulb' reference explained:
How many country musicians does it take to change a light bulb? One to actually do it and four others to sing a sad slow story about the Old Bulb! 🙂

Thanks again.
I have some time to spend...

Cool, if you need some help with this let us know, we'll do what we can!

I have concluded that the acoustic piano sounds on the Motif ES are useless. The pits. Definitely 5 steps backwards from the classic I bought many years ago.
I should have taken it for a longer test drive. It would have been nice if Yamaha spent to time getting the voices correct and less on BS.

Everyone's taste is different. That's why you were given the pianos from the Motif classic when you got the Motif ES. Load them or continue to lament about the "old bulb"

In simpler terms, you were given the pianos, re-read this thread.
The ES was discontinued almost 10 years ago, so it's hard to really comment.

I agree. The Motif ES acoustic pianos are bad. I bought a flash module and loaded Power Grand into MOXF and I was blown away! Big massive sound! I don't understand how Yamaha managed to get that big sound into 2.4 Mb..

If you need big and massive sound, the aptly named "Power Grand" would be your cup of tea.

I believe there are no "bad" sounds, only appropriate and inappropriate sounds for what you are attempting. If you are attempting to sound like a piano in the old west 1870's the "bad" sounding honky-tonk piano suddenly becomes the one that gets you the job scoring the HBO series...

So "good" and "bad" are subjective words that become less and less relevant when it comes to synth Libraries at this level... it's all about your application. Appropriate or inappropriate.

Yep, Power Grand is great.
I've always been curious about big sampled piano sound as heard on many live performances from 90s - sharp, expressive, big and massive! Something quite different than gigabytes of samples in software samplers. The Motif Power Grand is great, but my favorite piano is S700. I really love it! Is there a difference between XS/XF and original S90ES version? I believe they added release samples..
Do you know what is the size of S700? Could be 32 MB or somehting like it… 🙂

As memory serves, the S700 was sampled and first appeared in the S80. The original sample session could generate a terabyte of data... so when some one asks the difference between versions, it's not always understood... that simply because it is the same source S700 piano, and the data is from that session, depending on the target product... the selection of data will certainly be different. Each is is optimized for the target product. The type of keyboard matters.

The S80 had a single strike version of the S700 data - the medium strike - it doesn't explode like most hard strike samples. That and the buttery texture of the Source piano itself combined to make it a very popular sound. It appeared again in the S90 ... By the time the data was formatted for the S90 ES, many players here in the USA agree it reached its apex (its all personal taste, of course) but I've heard from many players that it became a favorite of theirs. And yes it was around 32MB as I recall...and it included multiple strikes by that time.

The Key-Off capability came after the S90 ES ... the Key-Off Articulation was introduced in the MOTIF XS engine, this detail extended the journey of the S700 data, the "S700 for XS". The Key Off sound is a subtlety, not found in the S90 ES, but enhances the playing experience in certain contexts... particular when playing a solo piece.

but the point is, the programmers work with the source data and different products can have different treatments of that data. But through it all, the smooth texture of the S700's sound comes through.

Yes, that's it! S700 (vith pedal resonance and release samples) is my favorite sampled piano! For me it beats the software samplers! Absolutely love it!
I used to have SY85 back in the 90's. I even bought expensive 2MB DIMM module just to load additional piano samples from floppy disk. If I remember correctly, switching the instrument off caused user data loss.. The pianos were very big and warm..
I've always loved hardware synths for their massive sound. And always will. 🙂
Cheers!

Hello,so glad I find this site.Can anyone help me please walk me through how to transfer or download Motif Power Grand to Motif ES.I am not that good in this but will Sacrifice all my time and effort just to get old Power Grand piano to my ES.
Thank you!

You were given the data for the Power Grand when you purchased the Motif ES it was given to you on one of those CD-ROMS...

If you were like most people you ignored them and possibly threw them out. See page 6 of the Motif ES Owners Manual for details on the provided Sound Libraries.

You will need to expand your ES with DIMMs (see page 289).
If you have misplaced you data, let us know.