Hallo Phil.

I Need More Insight Into The Four Track Arpeggios.
As I Now Recognized The Mega Nylon Performance Differs From Many Other Arpeggios Because Of It‘s Direct Chord Recognition.
It Doesn‘t Matter Here Which Way Around I Play A Chord.
When I Play Normal One Track Arpeggios I Am Limited To Only The Root Note Of A Chord To Make Montage Detect What Chord I Am After.
I Often Have The Problem That When I Play A Non Arpeggio Pad Full Chords And Exchange The Order Of The Notes Of These Chords Once In A While To Give My Playing A More Expressive Feeling With Ups And Downs My Arpeggios In The Performance Tend To Break Out Of The Chord Because They Always Rely On The Root Notes Of The Chords That I Am Playing.
Usually I Have Very Minimalistic Bass Lines Or Sequences As I Am Making Old School Synthie Pop.
But I Really Want To Be Able To Play Full Chord Performances Without Always Having To Stick On The Root Notes Of A Chord.
How Can I Program A Simple Bassline Running All The Time On One Note For Example The Way That It Recognizes The Correct Root Note Of A Full Chord I Am Playing.
This Is Really My Main Problem With Montage.
I Always Work Around That To Have At Least The Simple Parts Running On It‘s Own While Playing The Chord Part On The Right Side Of The Split Point.
Please Show Me How I Can End This And Really Play A Useful Accompaniment Section With Montage The Way That I Am Used To With My Yamaha PSR 8000 Back In The Days.
Thank You And Keep Up The Good Work.
I Learned A Lot From You.
Greetings From Germany Alex.

Hi Xander,
MONTAGE is not a PSR.
It is not an Arranger.
The rules are different.
PSR did not have an Arpeggiator, it had a STYLE engine.
While similar in some things they are as different as Electronica and Folk music in other things!

While arrangers have several different Fingering modes to accommodate different types of backing instruments, and playing styles, the Arpeggio is a phrase that can be manipulated via the Chord intelligence function, but there is not the same strict rules you find in the Arranger world.

In fact, on MONTAGE until you encounter an Arp phrase, you will not know what it will do until you try it! Some will surprise you.

It is so much more fun to play with the Mega arps than to make them. (imho) The User developed ARPs are handy to have if needed, but the Mega Arps especially for guitar are quite exceptional in my opinion. The Factory Dudes must have spent alot of time on some them. I like to work with playing them along maybe with one other instrument, right now I am working with a piano playing and guitar mega arp accomp.... and you can really make some amazing collaborations with these arps. Many of them you have to let loop thru many measures and voicings to really hear what they will do. So much fun, but I will probably never make my own.... just playing with the factory mega arps.... is so productive. Coupling this with the FC7 foot pedal, and assignments of other voices, effects, and scenes setup.... pleasurably powerful playing. Then being able to dump the fully articulated midi to Elements for incorporating into a production... with a simple set up... sound great, and getting easier as I refine my workflows to capture in midi then audio.... and stack on up in a tune.

Thank You Phil.

I Am Aware Of This.
I Also Followed Your Tutorials Step By Step.

The Mega Nylon Arpeggios And By That I Mean Every One Of Them
Are The First Type Of Arpeggios I Discover On The Montage
With Note Low / Note High And High Key Values As In A Typical Style Pattern.
This Gives Me The Ability To Play One And The Same Chord
On Whatever Region Of The Keyboard I Want It It Always Stays In The Same Pitch.
Also When I Exchange The Order Of My Held Notes For One Chord.
For Example When I Play A Normal C Major With C E G Or I Play C Major With E G C Or With G C E It Doesn‘t Matter.
The Chord Arpeggio Always Plays The Same Phrase For The Chord.
This Is The First Real Chord Intelligent Arpeggio That I Discover On The Montage.
Intelligent Due To The Fact That It Really Recognizes The Chord Wherever
And However I Play It And That The Output Phrase Hereby Always Stays The Same.
This Is Also Exactly How I Want To Build My User Arpeggios For My Montage.
I Am Writing For My Montage Because I Am Pretty Sure
That These Specific Type Of Arpeggios Can‘t Be Done
The Given On Board Put Track To Arpeggio Way.
Articulation Wise Yes.
But We Can Not Restrict The Arpeggios With Note Low And Note High Limits
Or High Key Values Or Transpose Type And Source Chord Information.
And This Is Appearingly The Way The Yamaha Programmers Did It In The Case Of The Mega Nylon Arpeggios.
Plus When Montage Came Out The On Board Put Track To Arpeggio Function Was Still Not Embedded.
So They Must Have Had An Alternative Way To Do It.
Please Give Us Users This Way Of Programming Real Chord Intelligent User Arpeggios At Hand.
Or At Least Me If I Seem To Be The Only One On Here With The Interest Of Programming These Kind Of Arpeggios.
What Is The Software Yamaha Used To Implement The Additional Control Values For The Note Limits And The Transpose Type?
Or Are There At Least Some Alternatives You Can Offer Us?
I Tried To Output A Sequence From One Man Band A Style Maker For Keyboards
Like Tyros But There I Can Not Save The Single Sequence As A Midi File To Later Put It Track To Arpeggio.
I Just Want The Control Values For The Specific Parameters That Control
The Chord Recognition Behaviour Of The Arpeggio Being Embedded In The Arpeggio Itself.
Your Tutorial Did Not Yet Cover That Part Of The Creation Of The User Arpeggios.
Your Example Is The Mega Nylon Sound But Your Tutorial Only Shows
The Stacking Of The Seperate Arpeggio Melodies And The Dynamic Relation To Each Other.
I Want To Learn The Exact Buildup Considering The Chord Recognition Part Of It.
So There Is More To That.
Please Continue With Your Tutorials About The 4 Track Arpeggio And Give Us More Insight Into These Programming Related Details.
Greetings And Thanks Again Alex.
I Really Appreciate Your Hard Work.

PS : I Attached A Picture Showing An Example Of The Value String
For Controlling The Chord Recognition The Way They Did It With The Mega Nylon Arpeggios.

Hi Gabi,

I read through the article as well. It is very in-depth.

If you are able to record three tracks in the same performance, then assign them to ARP Tracks 1-3, then you should be good.

Now, one little detail that you may have missed is that when you are assigning those ARP tracks to the voice(elements), you will need to set some key and volicity range limits on the keyboard bed for each active element.

For example, if element 7 is your thump, which you want ARP track 3(assuming this is the ARP used to save the thump recording feel, and the key range used were somewhere around G6-G8, then, you may want to set the key range on element 7 to similar range to avoid other sounds from that waveform from coming out.

If you adjust the key ranges from the Mega Nylon example given in the article, you will note that the sound begins to lose its authenticity and start sounding a bit weird.

Try adjusting the key ranges to one where the necessary notes were recorded.

I hope that helps!

Glad to see this string, I still dont think I will try to create my 4 track arps.... but I love the ones out of the box. I do have a question on some of the intelligent chord voicings the and differences... for example on one of the performances Bad Mister Montaged a lil while back. I could play a jazz voiced chord and leave out the root note, and it would understand that C13 chord and not a Bflat for example. Not sure it the chord intelligence used in the performance is something us mortals could program.

So How come the bass arp in Smooth Guitar knows that root is in C when playing c13 (bflat, e, a).................when other arps do not understand that chord voicing?

Is it Yamaha Arp Factory Dude Magic or something us mortals can reproduce 🙂