Which is the best way to add parts in performance, but to keep Common EQ and Common Tone of parts?

The “best way” to deal with this is understand that YOU DON’T and why you don’t!

Imagine each instrument you “merge” to your new Performance is like adding a musician to your ‘band’.
Each individual, Performance is an instrument that in its HOME has its own COMMON settings... this is like each individual musician has their own mixing console with settings. Each musician uses only a limited number of channels on their mixing console (most remain empty).

By merging them into a new Performance is like each individual musician getting in their car and traveling from their personal HOME to a location where they will all get to play together... while each musician will bring their instrument, including their two (2) Insertion Effects, they will not bring their mixing console, however. Each musician will plug into the empty channels on the mixing console at the get-together location.

It would be silly for all musician’s in the band to bring their own mixing console — and thus, since this works exactly as described, all the Parts when “merged” into your new Performance DO come with their Insertion Effects and instrument settings but all will use the COMMON (System) settings of their new location. They DO NOT bring the mixing console from their personal HOME.

How to avoid it THINKING you’re missing something important:
Understand that COMMON EQ and COMMON Tone settings exist to create a balance between the sounds in the current Performance. It is still going to be true, any time you merge an instrument into a new combinations, you naturally will need to redo the EQ and the TONE settings, obviously... it now has to balance with the new sounds it is being combined with.

The so called, Quick Edits (which the Common EQ and Common Tone are a function of) are shortcut offsets to be applied to the original (deeper) programming. Learn to recognize that the Quick Edit settings are mainly used for near-the-surface editing, while deeper editing exists. The deeper editing is how you ensure what the individual thing sounds like. The Quick Edit and Common settings are about blending the current group of combined programs.

The COMMON TONE Knob labeled CUTOFF, for example, acts to *offset* all active Filters in all the active Parts.
Remember each AMW2 Normal Part has as many as 8 Filters, each can be set to a completely different Filter Type;
Each FM-X has a Filter available which would be offset by this Knob, if active.

This will still be the case when you add (merge) a new Performance.

Important Takeaway
One of the first (hard) lessons you learn as a recording engineer or sound engineer...
You can make each instrument sound absolutely great when you play it by itself, but that certainly does not mean it will work when you combine them together. And what you get paid for is not how great they sound individually (no one cares)... the thing that makes you a great engineer is how they sound when they are all playing together. Your listener’s never hit the Solo button — they don’t have one.

How a Performance sounds before you merge it with others is going to change (particularly on things like EQ and TONE) when you do merge it. Absolutely. Every time. Those parameters that are “shared” (common) are what you now want to program yourself.

The deeper settings, the one that assigned the Band Pass Filter to Element 4 and the Low Pass Filter to Element 8 ... the ones that are apart of the structure of that instrument sound, those get copied intact when you merge Performances... it is only the Quick Edit parameter offsets that need to be redone... for good reason. The deeper edit parameters are the ones that make the individual instrument sound great... think of the Quick Edit offsets as those that help it blend with its neighbors.

When you place (merge) a Performance, it is your responsibility to work out the EQ setting that works... but if you are depending on the original programmer’s offsets to work in what you’ve chosen to combine it with, is not meaningful... it would be pure serendipity if it happened to work. It’s time for you to workout how they blend.

Hope that helps.

Voice mode has been removed from the MONTAGE/MODX — this is one of the consequences of that... but it remains a fact that all 16 programs used in a combination (Performance) share the same overall COMMON parameters and settings.... don’t confuse these with an individual Parts “Common” parameters... an AMW2 Part has 8 oscillators called Elements... which share some parameters in common.
An FM-X Part has 8 oscillators called Operators... which share some parameters in common.

So Performance Common and Part Common are two separate things to make clear.

Thank you for the comprehensive answer, Bad Mister, you really helped me understand the concept of Montage in this part. I just switched from Motif XS to Montage, so I was confused by the impossibility of copying the common sections, because on Motif musicians (voices) brought their mixers from their home 😀

.... on Motif musicians (voices) brought their mixers from their home 😀

Not really.... on the XS, just like on the MONTAGE/MODX only one set of COMMON settings applied to the entire MIXING. This is still very much the case. In the MONTAGE the Performance you start in (the one to which you add the others) its Common settings are shared by all those added to it.

In the XS you copy COPY (and therefore change) those one set of COMMON settings thus making the one you Copied the anchor for the MIXING setup.

If you wish one of the Performances you are adding to be the source for the Performance COMMON settings, simply start with it. And add the others to it. Again, there can be only one set of Performance COMMON settings. Exactly like your XS!

All instruments share the one MIXING Console — this means they all have Sends to the same Reverb Effect, to the same Variation Effect, they all pass signal to the same Master Effect, to the same Master EQ. This is the way...

“Parameter with Voice” —
Perhaps you are talking about parameters that are additional baggage (offsets) added to the original XS/XF Voice programming. In the Motif-series users were given a way to quickly edit the deep programming within a Voice... for example, a Voice could have 8 Elements in the XS, each Element could have its own filter and their own envelopes... say you wanted to use eight Elements to make a synth Pad sound, although each oscillator has its own Amplitude Envelope Generator each with its own Attack... while performing you want slow the overall Attack and the Release... having 8 separate AEG Attacks to change could make this a slow and clumsy thing to do while onstage.

This is where the Quick Edit Offset knobs, left front panel, on the XS/XF allowed the player to use a knob to offset all eight AEGs with one control. On the XS/XF you could ‘store’ these Offsets as associated parameters — in a similar way to how you could attach (associate) an Arpeggio with it. A knob labeled CUTOFF would apply an offset to all 8 Element Filters. We consider this additional programming as extra baggage. When selecting a Voice for a Part in a Performance or Mixing, you could opt to copy or bring along these additional offsets by selecting “Parameter with Voice”. The offsets you added, the Arps you associated, etc., etc., now can be brought along with the program you are selecting. This type of setting - can be dealt with in your MONTAGE, as well.

When you work in the XS/XF you are always *replacing* an item in the Song/Pattern MIXING... this is because in the XS/XF the 16 Part slots are always occupied by a “placeholder” program. In this situation when you *replace* an existing Part with another, you get a choice: does the selection bring along the offset (baggage) or does it inherit the current Part slot settings.

If you are creating a piano/bass split; you’re trying out different left hand bass sounds.... do you want your bass selection to respect your current Note Limits (inherit current settings) or do you want it come in as programmed (across all keys). You can understand that this *choice* is useful.

If you want to bring along previous programming you’d set “Parameter with Voice” = On
If you want to inherit the current Part settings, you would set “Parameter with Voice” = Off

Fast forward to your MONTAGE.. This is (also) the way... when you are *replacing* the program in an occupied slot, you will receive a set of options to recall that program using “Parameter with Part”. Here you get options as to which specific extra baggage to bring along/or not: “Mixing”, “Arp/MS”, “Scene”, “Zone”.

The way to get this to work is to start with the same or similar Init Mixing as you do on the XS/XF... where there is a “placeholder” program in each Part slot.

Press [CATEGORY SEARCH]
Set “Bank/Favorite” = All
Set “Attribute” = All
Select “Init” > “Multi/GM”

This places a placeholder program in each of the 16 Parts (exactly like the starting point for the XS/XF).
Now when you *select* a Part and hit [SHIFT] + [CATEGORY SEARCH] you will enter the “PartX - Category Search”, where X is the selected Part number... across the bottom of your screen are your “Parameter with Part” options. Green is active and means making a selection will copy the additional offset programming along with the settings of the selected program... grey (inactive) would allow the selection to join this Performance inheriting the current setting for the Part slot.

The “Part Category Search” is the one you use when *replacing* occupied Part(s). It is not the one to use (obviously) when the Part is unoccupied.

EXTRA CREDIT Seeing the Lights
Call up “Seattle Sections”
On the MONTAGE front panel, you will observe that [PERFORMANCE CONTROL] is lit and glows brightly - indicating it is active.
The four rows of 8 buttons are
PART SELECT 1-8
PART MUTE 1-8
MSEQ SELECT 1-8
ARP SELECT 1-8

To the left of the Part Select 1-8 buttons is the Performance [COMMON] button, also brightly lit (active). This is the condition of HOME.
To the right of the top two rows are the [MUTE] button (glowing brightly when a Part is set to sound) and a [SOLO] button.

If you press [PART SELECT 1] instead of the upper [COMMON] button, the second row will indicate which Parts are currently sounding (lit)
The third row becomes Element Select 1-8
The bottom row becomes Element Mute 1-8 (a bright glow for each active Element)
To the right of the two bottom rows are a second Mute/Solo button set... this time for individual Element/Operators.

By using Part Select button 1-7, you can see how many Elements in each Part, the fourth row will have a bright glowing button for each active Element. The light show you 7 Part Mute buttons are active. Then selecting each of those in turn will show you how many Elements are active in each — the bottom row shows the brightly glowing button for each active Oscillator (Element/Operator)

Learn to use your lighted front panel to MUTE and SOLO different components.

Sir,

I'm not talking about the Parameter with Voice function. On Motif XS, when I add Voice to Performance, for each added Voice I can, using the physical knobs in the upper left corner, set exactly the same EQ and Tone parameters as when that Voice was out of Performance. On Montage, on the other hand, this is not possible, because Common EQ and Part EQ do not have the same values. Specifically, Common EQ is 5-way and Part EQ is 3-way. It is possible, of course, to go into deep editing, and to process each Part, as well as the Element, separately, but again that Part cannot sound the same, that is, as it sounded when it was Performance by itself. Maybe it can, but in order to get an identical sound, hard work and absolute hearing are needed.
I accept the above concept of Montage, I will just have to get used to it.