Chris,

I dont feel like Montage has as good as guitar strum

Thanks
Tho

I scrolled through the Montage guitar waveforms and didn't find a strum recorded at this level - so it appears all strumming is done by assembling more atomic pieces (primarily "single" waveforms). It appears boldersounds is offering a different approach where strummed chords are offered as waveforms and therefore allow for a more realistic strum sound than using individual notes and building a strum. That's the theory, at least, and your ears are gravitating towards sampled strum. Since strums are chords - there may be some limitations in the chord types available through the target as classic rock doesn't often call for many chord extensions so you're likely covered by what's there if covering the same genre. Of course chords with extensions can be boiled down to more basic forms.

XF data should transfer over according to the compatibility FAQ, X3A files with user waveforms/arpeggios embedded should work fine. See http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical-instruments/keyboards/synthesizers/montage/#tab=PD5126639

The guitar from boldersounds gives you an X3A file. From the manual: "SteelGuitarXF.n2.X3A"

The other tradeoff is that the chords are split across the keyboard where one (or in some cases more than one) octave covers just the chord downstroke of one type, the next octave covers just the chord upstroke of the same type - then next octave us another chord type with similar pattern of downstroke notes then upstroke notes. You therefore loose some flexibility in pitch range of the chord since they are covering multiple stroke types (up and down) and multiple chord types depending on the key you press. It will make more sense if you download the manual for the boldersound and look at how to control a guitar to get the strumming realism you're after.

There are pages and pages of arps to go through for Guitar. Searching for "strum" doesn't turn up all the patterns that contain up/down stroke strumming - so there may be some digging to do to listen to all of the arps which are candidates for what you're after. I would assume you've already spent the time sorting through all the guitar built-in arps if you're at the point of purchasing a 3rd party X3A.

Since the last post, I dug a little myself. Just focusing on the MA_Strum1 through MA_Strum10 patterns, I was voicing chords with open guitar voicings which use all 6 strings. What I found interesting is that only 5 of the 6 strings are supported. The 6th string ("lead voice") did not sound.

In the case of an open Gmaj, the open-string guitar voicing uses (from lowest to highest string): {G1, B1, D1, G2, B2, G3} The numbers I've giving are octave numbers relative to the guitar's octave (1 as 1st octave of guitar, 2 as second, etc).

Therefore, some arps which are 1-to-1 your keyboard voicing - there's a limit of what you can do to construct a voicing that matches exactly what a guitar would "render".

The Boldersounds will have a different kind of limitation - but perhaps something closer to what you're expecting. With the X3A - you are stuck with the voicing they picked to record for any particular key pressed. A single key will produce a sound that a real guitar produced (so it will have all 6, 12 if 12-string, or less depending on the chord voicing sounding) - but for that note pressed on the keyboard you're locked into their voicing recording. For example - sometimes I would play a GMaj with (reference above) instead of B2, a D2 (the 5th of the chord instead of maj3rd). For the you-play-the-chord-shape based arps, you can change the voicing to play this different GMaj voicing. For Boldersounds, you are given the voicings they recorded which may not include this variant.

I think overall your ears are following the difference of constructed strums vs. real recorded strums and may not be as concerned about the voicing limitation - but wanted to point that out.

As mentioned, even preset (you-play-the-chord-shape) arps have a limit in the voicing due to less than 6 notes (MA_Strum# patterns for example).

To update - this 5-note voicing is not a system limitation. I imagine it's how the arps are programmed in the presets.

Take for example Arp: "[Mg]MB_Philly". This is a rare example of an arp which can voice all 6 notes of the GMaj chord as I outlined previously. In this case, I was able to put the lead voice as the high G ("G3") and also change the B2 to a D2 for the alternate GMaj voicing.

If I found one example, there are probably a few which allow for 6 individual notes to be fingered and sound within the arp .

Another interesting thing about "[Mg]MB_Philly" is that since you get 6 individual notes, you can also sound a cluster chord with 6 different notes a semitone apart {G,G#, A, A#, B, C}

In order to find more, what I did was play {C, C#, D, D#, E, F} and played the C-E at pp (soft) while the F I played at ff (loud). I kept this cluster playing on arp hold and cycled through the guitars listening for the dissonance of the minor 2nds. If I heard the dissonance and no "F" - which would stand out as being loud compared to the rest - I would assume 5 or less string support. I could easily hear 6-string support and found another voice "[Mg]MC_Bossa" which is like "[Mg]MB_Philly" in supporting any voicing that uses all 6-strings of a guitar. The other Bossa patterns except "[MG]BA_Bossa" support all 6 strings. It'd take me quite some time to go through all of them.

Another interesting observation about the chosen limits on guitar voicings is that the presets favor making a chord that fits with the generally accepted limited "box" of what would be commonly played in a given genre. So if your arp was like a session player - the jazz arp (session player) would never make the reggae gig. The reggae arps drop notes of voicings that are too far outside field.

This opens up user arps for hybrid styles where more extensions would be allowed in a reggae arp. Staying with this theme - Ernest Ranglin, for example, would likely never make the Montage reggae band per presets.

Over 10,000 ARPs but no up/down stroke strumming that's disappointed to me...This is very important for playing live since you are the only keyboard on the stage with no guitar man...Band has only Bass, Drum and Keyboard what should you do with-out the guitar strum for Rock, Chachacha, Ballad...

Thank you all for your inputs

Thanks

There are strum patterns which produce an up-and-down strum pattern - the ones already mentioned do this. The method used is to construct them with single note and "simulate" the guitar by adding together the various parts (notes struck going up the pattern, plus some pick noise, maybe guitar body noise, maybe fret noise).

There are plenty of examples of up-and-down stroke strumming arpeggios in the Montage - just done a different way than the Boldersound method - which seems (as one version) to be to record only the down as one arp (full chord) played by one finger (left) and then just the down stroke recorded (full chord) played by one finger (right). They also have single-note type which would be similar to the methods used by the presets - but with a different waveform so you'll get a slightly different character per. their recording (good or bad - not sure - different: I'm sure).

It's easier to play the presets (strike a chord and the arp takes care of the rest) while the other (Boldersound) method may let you vary up the down vs. up stroke more and may sound more realistic in doing so - among other previous reasons why the recorded chord vs. assembling with single notes (added) may sound more realistic.

I haven't dug into this - but lots of X3A files allow for a demo version with some limitation (limited range maybe - or notes - or velocity - or?). Since playing this is different than the presets - it would be advantageous if you could somehow testdrive a demo version to make sure you're comfortable with how to perform these and that your performance can match up to what you're expecting in terms of quality.

I am the guy (Dave Polich of DCP Productionswho actually created the Acoustic Steel Guitar library. Bolder Sounds provided the sample data. I came up with the concept and did all the voices. The voices were originally done on a Motif XS. Then the library was converted to Motif XF format. What is available from
Bolder Sounds (and also at YamahaMusicSoft.com) is the Motif XF version which Montage can load. It is not formatted yet for Montage specifically
(that will happen next year).

Acoustic Steel Guitar is indeed a comletely different concept than using Arpeggios or Phrases to accomplish up and down strumming. It is actual samples (recordings)'of
a guitarist strumming chords on an acoustic guitar. Both upstroke and downstroke chords are included, in multiple chord types. Not every chord type was recorded so
not every chord type is available...just the common ones (major, minor, major seventh, minor seventh, diminished, augmented, sus4). There was not enugh memory available to include every conceivable guitar chord voicing. However, the included types will cover most pop song structures.

The way things are laid out in ASG, it is very easy to play convincing strum parts, in real time. This was the whole reason I wanted to do the library - because
arpgegios and phrases, while great, are always locked and quantized to the tempo, and can't be changed "on the fly" or played in real-time without concern for
tempo. I believe this results in much more realistic strumming from the keyboard.

To clarify, there are no plans to release a free time-limited or note-limited "demo" of Acoustic Steel Guitar. To date it is the only library of recorded guitar strums
("single-note" guitar voices are also included) available for any Yamaha workstation.

Thanks for the info, Dave. When I first heard the recorded examples of the voices / before reading the manual - I thought the voices were done with complete up/down strumming together - so the assembled up+down at different tempos really is convincing and a great concept to add another tool in the arsenal for keyboard players covering guitar parts.