Voices and Performances are two different ways of building a sound on your ES. The Voice is primarily one instrument in your band. Voices can be edited and saved and to access these, you would be in voice mode. Voices have lots of intricate details you can set for how that one instrument acts on its own.

A Performance is made up of a collection of voices. So you can have many different instruments at your disposal when in Performance mode. You always start by choosing which voices you want to add to a Performance - and they're the same ones available when in Voice mode. Only now you can play several voices (4 max) at once. So Performances have a bit more flexibility in arranging. A Performance can even offset some of the voice settings - so you can modify how the voice, once in a performance, "acts". In a way you can do some bit of editing of a voice while in Performance mode. The edits (offsets) do not change the original voice. So offsetting a voice in one Performance does not change any other Performance's use of the same voice.

If you needed to make more of a change to a voice that is used by a performance than what the performance offsets allowed - you can do that. Press the [VOICE] mode button.

Then call up the voice you used inside the performance, make your edits, save the voice. Any Performance which uses this Voice will now also be updated with the new voice changes.

That said, I don't think you're wanting to edit the voice itself (in voice mode). You want to access the "VOICE" tab inside Performance mode which allows for you to manipulate voices. There are actually two places where "VOICE" shows up in a tab (accessed with the function keys) in Motif. I'm not sure what your video is showing you -- which one of the two. In one mode, the VOICE tab shows a summary of the voices used (each PART 1-4, the voice bank/etc and name used along with the note range in a graph). This is the screen accessed by pressing F2. Shown in the upper-left of https://www.motifator.com/storage/support/motifese1.pdf page 71

This screen allows for you to add or delete voices (assign or remove a voice from each PART) and set the upper and lower note limits of each performance PART (each "voice" ). There's not a lot of advanced editing here - just the basics. An overview. Although you can add/delete voice assignments to PARTs here - and set note ranges - I never did. There's a different way and I just never used this screen's way of manipulating voices.

To call up the "other" VOICE menu - do the following:

1) Press the [PERFORMANCE] button under the mode section - pictured above
2) Press the [EDIT] button
3) Press the "ELEMENT/PERF ZONE/PART" number button 1-4 (1 or 2 or 3 or 4) to select which PART you want to edit. Each PART corresponds to one of the Voices that built this Performance.

See the manual above page 88

From here - if you press the F1 button - this will select the other "VOICE" tab. This VOICE tab has different items you can edit depending on which SF[1-5] button you press. Here you can edit either which voices to assign to each part [SF1] or the note limits [SF3] or ... other "VOICE" sub-menus.

Hello Jason and thank you for your detailed response.

I am understanding what you are telling me and it seems more and more like I have a faulty F2 switch. When I hit F2 in performance play mode as shown on pg.71, it does not bring up that "voice" screen. However, F3, F4, & F5 seem to work ok. (btw F1 doesn't bring back to play mode- is it supposed to?). I have actually never seen that screen shown on pg. 71 yet since having the board.

The second way of seeing the parts that you mentioned "Press the "ELEMENT/PERF ZONE/PART" number button 1-4 (1 or 2 or 3 or 4) is the screen that I seem to be able to access "some of the time", but not all. Even when I hit the ELEMENT/PERF ZONE/PART, it doesn't always bring up that screen which is also troubling. And when I hit F1 on that screen it does not bring up the other screen either. Maybe both my F1 and F2 buttons are having issues which is very distressing to me. F2 and F1 appear to not be functioning properly and that seems to be ugly truth here

Do you think another reboot back to Factory settings might help, or does this sound more like a button issue. Also, there anything that I can do address a button that is not functioning properly, or do I need to take into a shop?

Thanks again Jason for helping. If you or anyone else can address this issue further, I would greatly appreciate it.

It is likely a button issue - do not use force — when a button is working properly very little force is necessary. The amount of pressure should remain the same for all similar buttons - if your other buttons below the screen are working, they should all respond to a similar amount of downward pressure. They work by contact. Dust is the enemy of most any electrical contact, and it will find its way into where contact is made, eventually.

Do not take any action like spraying the front panel with just any cleaner; unless you are using the appropriate electronic safe cleaner it is best not to spray anything on your keyboard. The fact that dust eventually gets into the product is real, the fact that two adjacent buttons are not working could be a cracked component in that region... which can happen when you have convinced yourself that pressing the button harder will make it work. If it’s a cracked circuit board - that may need replacing. If it’s dust you may want to have it cleaned by an authorized service center.

It probably is a good idea to have it looked at by a qualified service center. You can reach out to Yamaha Customer Support, they maybe able to help you with your options... including those you can try before taking it anywhere.

Thank you so much again, Jason, for taking the time to address my issue. Also, thank you for your insights as well, Bad Mister! At least now I understand more that it was not something I was doing wrong, but rather, there is an actual problem with the buttons.

When you say "play mode" or "voice mode" - this is confusing to me. I may be a stickler - but there's no "play mode" and voice mode (or performance or master mode) are set by the buttons I show in the picture above. None of the function keys will change the mode. The folder tab that's labeled VOICE (while in Performance Mode) doesn't change the mode to voice mode when you press the corresponding function button. What this does is bring up a menu which allows for you to edit voice-related parameters which are overrides to the voice's programmed values. It's not a mode - it's a menu (and sub-menu). The folders on the top row are sub-menus. I also call them "tabs". The documentation refers to them as functions (bottom row) and sub-functions.

I can follow what you're saying - but "voice mode" is a specific real mode the keyboard switches into and it gets messy to use "voice mode" in a wrong context since it may be confused you mean that you press the actual [VOICE] mode button.

I understand the confusion Jason and I apologize. However, I basically know nothing about keyboards and was trying to explain my problem the best I could. I was talking about accessing the "voice tab" within the performance mode. I now see that my F1 & F2 buttons simply do not work.

I am still able to layer sounds in performance mode using the "ELEMENT/PERF ZONE/PART" buttons, but then because F1 & F2 don't work, I cannot get back to the voice tab if I leave it. That is why I described it as being stuck in "performance mode". The person I bought it from was not very honest with me and it is very depressing to me that this board is filled with limitations now. I was messing around in "pattern mode" last night and found that without having F1 and F2 functioning, I am also unable to switch out voices within a pattern. Do you or anyone else know offhand how significant not having F1 & F2 will be to me moving forward. I haven't even received the Yamaha tutorial video yet. I was looking so forward to learning how to create patterns and songs, etc. Sorry for venting, but you guys who own these Motifs know how cool they are. Like I said, the former owner told me everything was functioning properly and I took him at his word. I don't know how much repairs will cost, but I am wondering if I could just get used to having the sound access only. I certainly don't want to invest more into this board, if it is not worth it.

With all that is going on within our nation at this point, I realize that my problems are minimal. However, I am very saddened that this "new to me" used keyboard is not functioning properly. I sincerely appreciate your insights though and I am grateful that there is a forum like this in existence.

The main way to interact with anything on the screen is to use the function keys. Having any one of these broken is going to impair your use of the instrument. I'm not sure if the arrow directional buttons (left and right) will provide an alternative way to get to these menus. Also, you notice that sometimes the default is to choose the left-most menus so sometimes you "come in" with those which can help alleviate the need to have F1 working. But F2 is a bigger bother if the directional keys or some other key combination can't get you to those menus.

Repair or replace are your options. That only a few buttons are impacted means that nothing terribly expensive is broken. It's not a problem with the I2C GPIO parts that manage the button presses. Probably not interconnect if only two buttons are impacted - but could be interconnect (ribbon cables). Sometimes just re-seating those is enough to self-clean the contacts. Most likely it's the switch itself which have replacement parts but require soldering I believe in that generation.

Here's a page that walks through what it takes to replace these buttons - it's about $5 worth of parts (from Syntaur - a different place than this link) even including the plastic switch replacement.

http://www.bustedgear.com/repair_Yamaha_motif_buttons.html

I'm not advocating you do this repair yourself - but you can see the general work that's involved here. And that replacing the electrical part does indeed require soldering. The link above is for the Motif classic - not for the ES. But it's representative of the work involved and any tech (even one not experienced with keyboards) can follow it to fix your issue.

Given you know it's $5 worth of parts + shipping - you add an hourly rate plus bench fee minimums (which is typical) to run quite a bill. Shopping around you may be able to find those who don't have bench minimums or who see easy jobs like this as an entry to earn your business and undercut other quotes. I'm not sure how much you paid for the keyboard - but hopefully you have some margin to invest in the repair and still come out ahead.

You may have other options dealing with the original seller (or not) - but that's your business, so to speak.

You are going to want to have the [F] and [SF] (Function and SubFunction) buttons in working order. The problem is likely dust. If the unit has been exposed to the air for 17 years, and that is all that is wrong with it... that’s fantastic. I would never buy an instrument, electronic or not, that was 17 years old without including the price of a trip to a service center, in what I thought I might want to spend on it.

‘No scratches on the physical unit‘ gets way too high a priority in my book... functioning keys and buttons gets a much, much higher placement on my list of preferences... storage options is way up there as well.

A good internal cleaning by a professional is only fair... to both you, as purchaser and the seller, as a responsible individual.
Is the dust his fault? Having lived on this planet as long as I have, I know even if in a box, wrapped in a dust cover, dust will eventually find its way in... anticipate it, verify that this is what it is, get it removed... if it is a part that needs replacement, the service center can tell you about availability, cost and wait time, if any, before they do the work.

But a good cleaning is in the interest of both parties buyer and seller. You want to feel good about your purchase and believe it or not, they actually want you to feel good about your purchase. You’ll need to work that out.

Thanks again both Jason and Bad Mister for your insights. The previous owner never responded to my calls weeks ago shortly after I bought it, so I am on my own at this point. You live and you learn. I normally never buy used electronic equipment, but in this case, I did.

I did reach out to a few Yamaha repair technicians in my area yesterday and am anticipating hearing back from them tomorrow. Hopefully, the price will not be too steep, and if it turns out to just be dust, all the better.

Once again, thank you to both of you for caring enough to listen and give me feedback.