They're all there.

but non of them are linked to any of the sounds.

Yamaha decided not to bring in any of the Motif XF / MOXF performances on board.

The voices are in, the performances are out. on top of that, there are almost NO performances which sounds like something "arranger style" (accompaniment + solo).

Between us, this could've been done easily, but it wasn't done... so it is what it is. all you'll get is comments about how probably hard it would've been to the Yamaha team to port the performances also to the Montage. alternatively, the answer given to me was "buy an arranger". 😀 I don't want an arranger, just to have fun playing and accompanying myself from time to time with the Montage. the information is all there.

OK, cubase cubase, sequencer out, we get it. I never cared too much about the sequencer on the Motif, I always used DAWs. but it would seem like more of a strategy, to sell Steinberg Cubase everywhere (Yamaha owns Steinberg). btw, if you'll ask me, I recommend other DAWs than Cubase.

but, you left all arps in, right? what about actually doing something with them? funny stuff though. 😉

Eyal wrote:

They're all there. but non of them are linked to any of the sounds.Yamaha decided not to bring in any of the Motif XF / MOXF performances on board.
The voices are in, the performances are out. on top of that, there are almost NO performances which sounds like something "arranger style" (accompaniment + solo).

I wasn't aware of this. Are you saying that most of the Performances aren't setup with multiple parts or are you being Motif specific? I was wondering why so many videos spotlight single parts with motion, Super Nob and arps etc..

Thank you very much for your replies. That clears it up for me. It's disappointing that Yamaha was not more specific on this. I worked the Motif for 10 years. Sold it thinking that I would be covered on the Montage.

I also need to comment on the very poor user manuals that Yamaha included with the Montage. I certainly hope that Phil is working on new videos for the Montage. Yamaha has left me hanging again. I guess that I need to buy a used Motif. Not thrilled with this.

On another note, I tried Cubase, the version that came with the Motif and the Montage. I'm sticking with the latest version of Logic Pro X.
And I love the Montage Connect plug-In.

Eyal wrote:

They're all there.

but non of them are linked to any of the sounds.

Yamaha decided not to bring in any of the Motif XF / MOXF performances on board.

The voices are in, the performances are out. on top of that, there are almost NO performances which sounds like something "arranger style" (accompaniment + solo).

Between us, this could've been done easily, but it wasn't done... so it is what it is. all you'll get is comments about how probably hard it would've been to the Yamaha team to port the performances also to the Montage. alternatively, the answer given to me was "buy an arranger". 😀 I don't want an arranger, just to have fun playing and accompanying myself from time to time with the Montage. the information is all there.

You're absolutely right!!

Before I sold my Motif, I manually transferred several Motif performances to the Montage. It is some work and it can be done easily. But doing the same over and over again is a little boring. Approx. 6 months ago, I suggested to transfer all the performances as a user-group. F.e. everybody doing 2 banks, however, there was no interest in it.

I don’t understand why Yamaha (or another company) doesn’t sell a “Motif performances-library”. Most, if not all, of the work could be done automatically (IMHO). I would pay approx. $50 for the complete set of Motif performances and I think others would be interested too.

Quint wrote:

You're absolutely right!!

Before I sold my Motif, I manually transferred several Motif performances to the Montage. It is some work and it can be done easily. But doing the same over and over again is a little boring. Approx. 6 months ago, I suggested to transfer all the performances as a user-group. F.e. everybody doing 2 banks, however, there was no interest in it.

I don’t understand why Yamaha (or another company) doesn’t sell a “Motif performances-library”. Most, if not all, of the work could be done automatically (IMHO). I would pay approx. $50 for the complete set of Motif performances and I think others would be interested too.

I completely agree, I would gladly pay for such conversion, as long as its made right and correct.
The XF/MOXF performances were really great and inspiring. Please do it! paid or not paid, it's up to Yamaha to decide. but just don't put 10,000 (!!!) arps inside the machine, and have us choose and search for one for each of the 8 parts of the performance, its ridiculous! you already have all that data. there's no point in "bragging" 10,000 arps inside the machine when its not doing anything with them.
now, I guess we don't need to ask for anything new, The XF/MOXF had it already nailed in perfectly.

Under different context, a previous discussion mentioned that Montage doesn't duplicate Motif because it would not be an advancement to have a new flagship which is a "cut and paste" of the previous products with a few more bells and whistles. The fact that you have so much new content - that is trying and hopefully succeeding in staying musically relevant/useful/modern should be a positive. If you have to have all of the Motif sounds - then there are a few choices. You can keep a Motif or you can backup the presets (by backing up the user banks which were initialized to duplicates of the preset banks). I believe this only translates voices, not performances - so that is a drag to have to program all the performances if you really want to do it that way AND want "all" of the performances.

For me, I had a MO series - which unfortunately has no compatibility with files to the Motif or Montage line. On the few voices/performances I wanted to carry forward to Montage, I programmed them manually. Going through every page on the MO6 for the voice/performance and duplicating settings. Although there are a bunch of new waveforms - the waveforms (elements) were there for what I needed. I take it the entire XF set is there as well. A datalist compare (which I haven't done) would shake this out.

There are performances which are "throwback" and are identical enough to the XF voices. I typically stay away from the "mega" or ARP'ed performances - so I can't comment on what is carried over from the performance perspective.

One statement that isn't quite true is the comment about hardly any voices having an arranger style. Maybe I'm missing the boat of that comment, but starting with the first performance in the "all" list:

Pianos - you're right (about the background + lead style), but lots do have ARP examples of just the piano doing something stylized to match the sound ("classical" sounding, or "rock/riff" sounding). You have to press the [ARP ON/OFF] button to hear this - sometimes a scene will turn this on - most of the time not.

One page down is "Schlager Weapon 1" which has a drum beat. Not exactly an impressive one - but we're starting to have more than just one sound.

Electric pianos (gallery or FM) do not have much - except the CP80 does have ARPs. In this area, seems all the FM performances do not have any "movement". Not until "88 key Case Hard" which has a cool ARP. The individual electric piano performances (AWM2) most all have an ARP to demo.

The next one after "Schlager Weapon 1" is "Early 80s Discopop". This one is 3 pages down.

"FM - What else" is next. With an arpy-pad in the left hand and synth lead in the right. This one is 4 pages down

"Midnight Funk" - next

"GrooveOrgan" - next. Had a lot of fun with this a while back.

"ScotsAccordion MMM" - last scene has "drums"

"OrganSubBass Swell"

"Songwriter 2015"

"Acoustic Jam"

"1 Finger Gangster"

"Rock Star" - although not really split

"Dub Rock Bass" is interesting

"T3 Uber Funk" - not really split

"Warped Bass Traxx" - "

"FM Abstracts" - not really a "solo" type performance. File this under "new stuff Montage can do"

"Tektonic Dub" - not really a "solo" type performance. ditto

"Yo Luv" - not really split

"Slow and Steady"

"Arcade"

"Chillomatik"

"Padderday"

"PiTCh Up Vowel Pad"

"Square don't care"

... it'd take a while to go through them all.

Also, the comment about the ARPs - there may be more ARPs utilized than you think. Press the [ARP ON/OFF] button to see what I mean. Lots of single part piano, electric piano, string, etc. all have an ARP the preset uses.

I do understand the comment about being inspired by the Motif content. I would submit that, although different, the Montage content is also very inspiring.

Finally, also keep in mind there are two schools of thought on this type of performance. Myself, I play the keyboard in bands that have a drummer, bass player, guitarist, etc. So I'll get to one of these type of more arranged performances, press a key, hear all the drums and bass etc - and quickly mute that. "sorry, guys". next performance. So my use - and perhaps lots of others - would probably prefer less (not more) of these types of performances. The more arranger features - the less product differentiation there is. However, I do respect that there's another camp that would like to have these mega performances (which, by the way, the guitars, for example, mostly all have one - you have to turn ARP on) and the drums+pad+bass+lead type voices -- and more of them.

Voicing your opinion does serve to tip the scale - so it's good to have the input. Third party developers of content may be watching too and start filling the gap.

Jason wrote:

Under different context, a previous discussion mentioned that Montage doesn't duplicate Motif because it would not be an advancement to have a new flagship which is a "cut and paste" of the previous products with a few more bells and whistles. The fact that you have so much new content - that is trying and hopefully succeeding in staying musically relevant/useful/modern should be a positive. If you have to have all of the Motif sounds - then there are a few choices. You can keep a Motif

Just because I know of the specific comment you imply to, this is the same as what was said to people who asked about a year ago for XS Library import. there were all sort of excuses, and eventually in v1.2 we have it.
The Montage has all those arps inside. All I (or "we" which doesn't necessarily imply YOU) want is to have something done with them.

Having something made with all those arpeggios doesn't mean it will hold the Montage back and make it the same as the XF. and they stayed there for a good reason probably. and frankly, it's already all there.
I believe, for the Yamaha team such conversion would be a piece-of-cake.

Jason wrote:

One statement that isn't quite true is the comment about hardly any voices having an arranger style. Maybe I'm missing the boat of that comment, but starting with the first performance in the "all" list:

Only 10-20 on the entire Montage. It's just the tip of the iceberg. plus, they're pretty "OK" (as you noted). The XF/MOXF had HUNDREDS of extremely useful ones.
It's 10,000! TEN, THOUSAND! having a few numbered performances that use them is ridiculous.

It can also be an optional update, just as the "optional" Bosendorfer piano.

Jason wrote:

I do understand the comment about being inspired by the Motif content. I would submit that, although different, the Montage content is also very inspiring.

I agree.

Jason wrote:

So my use - and perhaps lots of others - would probably prefer less (not more) of these types of performances.

Really? you don't think that "lots of others" would want XF style performances out of the 10,000 arpeggios supplied in the Montage? or it suits you better to say that the way you do?

My short answer for you here would be - you DON'T have to use them. You should use what YOU, NEED.

Jason wrote:

The more arranger features - the less product differentiation there is.

You should consider working for Yamaha. but THEY are the ones who decided to include all the arps from the XF in.

Jason wrote:

Third party developers of content may be watching too and start filling the gap.

or FIRST party.

Note that I didn't list all the performances that use at least one of the thousands of ARPs. I limited the list to ones that fit more of the left-hand ARP + solo (lead) use in right hand. Nearly all the AWM2 performances use an ARP. The "gallery" performances and a few others are exceptions.

From my search thus far - I'm not sure why FM-X (only - not combined FM-X plus AWM2) performances did not have any ARPs. I was beginning to think that FM-X didn't allow ARPs before going back into Init Normal (FM-X) and confirming I could make an ARP myself of the simple single operator sine wave.

Also, as mentioned - I only ran through a subset of everything before I thought there was enough to be more than "hardly any". That's 20 out of what I ran through - which is 24 screens worth. Not sure if the distribution is representative, but 16*24 = 384 (out of 1920 total). 20/384*100 = 5% roughly for the area I looked in, which if the trend continues will mean 96 performances with the "left hand arp thing along with right hand solo thing".

The number is perhaps something like 30% that use any form of ARP. Like the Motif guitar mega voices that demonstrate a guitar with the pick sound strumming with string squeaks. Or harp runs. Or piano rock and roll riffs. etc. I come up with this number because, of what I sampled, for whatever reason FM-only performances didn't use ARPs - so I called that "50%" - then was conservative and said out of the 50% which is FM+AWM2 or only AWM2 - maybe 20% do not showcase an ARP. Which is a high value (meaning highly conservative). But that brings us to 1920*.30 = 576 which use one form of ARP or another. This isn't how many ARPs - because if an ARP is used - you know there are usually at least 4 variations showcased (using ARP1-8) which brings us to approx 2,304 ARPs showcased. Sure there will be repeats - lets make it an even 1,000.

What I didn't see in your message was if you agreed that you may have missed many performances do use ARPs - even though when you navigate to the performance it doesn't default to have the ARP on.

So using suspect approximations (because I only manually ran through 20% of the presets) - this summary is

96 ARP plus lead (solo) type performances
576 Performances that use ARPs
1,000 ARPs showcased

Keep in mind this totally ignores that ARPs are now used for motion control as well - so the "showcased" means only for controlling playing notes. I believe when looking at the number of ARPs - it's easy to forget how they can be used in different ways other than playing notes.

Those statistics, as flawed as they may be, are on the thin side for you. And I understand that. If Motif XF had substantially more ARP plus lead (solo) performances - and I used this feature (instead of lamenting it) - then I would be in your shoes as well. At this point, I don't know where the Motif XF stacks up in terms of count for this particular narrow category (saying this so we don't lob together the "any ARP at all" category here). Any time you take something away from customers in a progression of related products - expect outcry. Every once and a while, you do however have pivot points where things are taken away and eventually accepted (like removal of disk drives, move to USB. serial ports, parallel ports going away from computers, etc). Typically, even when this happens - some (at cost) "legacy" solution which is a go-between is still available. In summary - although I'm not in your camp - I think you may have valid reason for the gripe. I'm just trying to make sure that you can and do uncover the type of content Montage currently provides that matches what you want.

I do agree that not being able to convert Motif XF performances is a missing marketing bullet that puts a dent into the "Motif XF" story. Hopefully this will get shored up - as it also helps 3rd parties "jump start" getting content into the channel. Although not having the conversion "forces" more tailored content - I still think a more complete conversion would be overall a benefit to Montage.

As far as working for Yamaha because of my response in this thread. I believe I'm balanced. I point out when there is a competitive disadvantage and try to offer solutions. I point out what I consider "bugs" or otherwise problems that can be corrected to improve the experience. I get lots of pushback from Yamaha - but sometimes that pushback eventually turns into a firmware update (not because I alone made this happen, but likely threw in my feedback along with others from different channels that agreed). I defend the user's position (even yours). I do know it's difficult to make everyone happy. Hopefully your feedback and followup can help carve out some of the future direction. And hopefully I've helped you discover some "hidden" features.

What I will say is that I wish "hidden" and "easter egg" was not part of the discourse because documentation was relevant enough for performance content such that we couldn't use these terms ("hidden"/"easter egg").

Good to know, I kinda noticed that in the store, but if all the arps are there. We can make our own performances. Mine arrives in about a week or so. Quesion: Does each scene have 1 arp per voice? On the guitar voice, can you have 4 assigned like on the MO? and pick from within a scene. Or do you have one default arp per voice per scene?

@Mitchell
The good news is that most of the terminology used in Montage will be familiar to you... in the week you have until yours arrives... the following retasking of terms may be interesting for you (based on your question):

The word "VOICE" has been replaced by "PART" - in the MO-series and Motif-series, "Parts" (there were found in Performance and Sequencer modes) referenced a Voice back in Voice mode. When you edited a Voice in a Part of what was a 4-Part Performance or a 16-Part Mixing, you were programming "offset" parameters that were then applied to the original Voice located in Voice mode. When you set the Note Limit Low = C3 on the "Full Concert Grand", you are creating an offset parameter through which you will reference that Preset Voice... the Preset Voice was not destructively changed... the Part in the Mo or Motif was a set of offset parameters applied to a Voice location.

There is no such surrogate system in Montage. Since it has tons and tons more memory than all previous synths in the series mentioned, there is no need to reference a stored Voice. *Every* Part in a Montage Performance is not only independent, but is actually stored in memory as its own entity. There is no VOICE mode.

If you knew the MO/Motif series synths, a MIX VOICE was one that was stored "locally" with the Song or Pattern Mixing setup it was created for... well Montage has an unlimited number of "Mix Voices"... in that every Part of a 16 Part Performance is its own independent program. When you reuse it, you basically copy it to its new location where it now is independent.

It is because these Parts can be used as *complete instrument* sounds or they can be used as partial building blocks to make an instrument sound, that many are confused by Montage. In the MO a Part was always a complete instrument. I can use a Part in Montage as just one articulation in an arsenal of different gestures that I might need to perform.

Say you are in a band and your job is to act as the brass section. You might select one of Montage's Brass Section Performances...or you can build one with just the articulations that you need.

Say you need in the course of the Song: quick stabs, a sforzando climb, a pitch scoop, and a drop off... you can place these different Single Part gestures together in your Performance, and then "program" when they will occur. You can map control to Assign Switches, to Velocity, to Foot pedal, to the Super Knob... but the thing is in Motif or Mo you might have had these different musical gestures as separate Voices... you can now construct YOUR brass section sound with those complete Voices as building components, you can also (importantly) design *how* this Performance plays based on your musical composition.

Updating your question to refer to Montage:
A Scene can memorize which Arp is assigned to any of the Parts... it also memorized which Motion Sequence is assigned to that Part... among its other duties. There are 8 Scene buttons, there are 8 Arp Select buttons, there are 8 Motion Sequence buttons; so eight Arp phrases and eight Motion Sequences can be accessed via the front panel Performance buttons. Arps and MS can be paired in any combination to the Scene buttons.

Think of Motion Sequences as being like Arps, but control parameters settings instead of triggering Note-on events.
You link any Arp and any Motion Sequence to any Part as you desire. There are 10,000 Arpeggio phrases. 8 can be associated with any Part in any Performance. You can control a maximum of eight Parts at once, yes, each could have an arpeggiator of its own.

One of the really cool things about Montage is that you can put together your own Performances by "merging" existing data. Programming at the Performance level of the architecture is legit, easy, fun... oh there's a few new things to master but once you learn them...

Wow... thx for the translations :)...... I used the drum and guitar arps a lot for laying down basic tracks so I would probably play those as separate performances with 8 arps / scenes for each... just to get the basic structure down. And then work on playing live montage tracks probably dumped as wavs onto the arp generated scratch tracks on cubase. Just to get into the machine next week. The motion sequence: I noticed that the beats are divided by 8.... I guess if it was a swinging tempo you would use the swing function to get it to snap to the triplets. I know nothing about FM synthesis, and it sounds like we can program that from the bottom up if we want.... that's a new question for another time :). Great forum.

Okay, let me get this straight—the Montage includes all the arps from the Motif (plus 3,000 more), but "none of them are linked to the sounds?" I'm primarily interested in getting a Montage specifically for the idea-generating arps (with built-in splits). Does v2.0 change this? Now, with the v2.0 firmware upgrade, the Motif arp performances and associated sounds may be imported to the Montage intact. But if you don't own a Morif (and never have), you won't have those arps + sounds? Is this correct?

I know I've been all over the map recently concerning my future Montage purchase (e.g., "I'm never buying another hardware synth—I'm going all-Kontakt . . . "), but last night, a particular combi on my Kronos helped me create a track that would've been difficult for me to produce manually, piece-by-piece. My main shift in focus back to hardware synths are the musical-aids which they can provide for lesser musicians like me to assist in generating ideas.

So I only have one question: If I've been wanting a Montage for its "included" 7,000 Motif arps, you know, the kind with rhythm/bass sounds on the lower-split, and the "lead-sound" on the upper-split, do I really want a Motif, and not a Montage? I owned a Motif XF for a few days (I had to return it because it arrived damaged), and loved the built-in arps—they really help jump-start my creative process. The presumably improved-sounding Motif-esque arps was the primary reason I was interested in a new Montage. Should I buy a used Motif XF instead for my specific needs?

Andy wrote this in the Montage OS v2.0 thread:

All of the Motif XF sounds and arpeggios are already in the Montage. Just not the Performances. One could actually reassemble all those XF performances but it would take a really long time to do that!!

Same questions . . .