I don't use Montage the same way you do. I hardly leverage DAW recording (either MIDI or Audio) along side Montage as that's not really my arena of interest or financial compensation. Although somewhat of a "hobby" - this is also my profession. I think there can be a big difference in what's important when approaching tools as job-related vs. pure hobby. As a job, I need to satisfy two things in this order: a) make my audience happy, b) keep myself from getting upset.

Breaking that down - the audience is much easier to please than myself. That's why I don't try to make myself "happy". The audience doesn't need me to buy a B3 and a Moog and whatever else to get some kind of "authentic" sound. They'd be happy with a kazoo if played with conviction. This is what has me approach my work, many times, as "good enough" vs. "best possible". That ends up saving me lots of time and frustration in the long run - because I've worked at perfection before. I never get perfection. It takes forever. So I aim lower and am happier for it. I don't try to make myself "happy" - it's more about removing a negative - prevent myself from being upset. So I do end up striving for a level of "perfection" higher than my audience needs. That's the layer where I can still feel good about something above and beyond the bare minimum. This is why I don't just use the same 10 "patches" - although I could and get by. That's also why I do edit presets instead of just sticking with presets. But the amount of things I do not do (that I once would "obsess" over) gives me more time to not be tied to computers/the keyboard and get on with my life (outside of music) or playing (inside the music).

That said - I kind of had to go through the "pains" of bumping into walls and discovery and wrong workflows and ... in order to get to a point where I knew what to throw out and what works for me. I'm not sure you can skip to this place. It's a process.

Since I've used Yamaha keyboards for years - and because I don't see Montage as "that different" from the Motif/MO line of the past - the learning curve on Montage wasn't that tough. It's very likely that if you stick with Yamaha the general approaches/architectures/strengths/weaknesses are not going to change with future incarnations of what once was Montage and your time figuring out the keyboard will diminish. That may not help you now - but I did choose to stick with Yamaha, in great part, due to the investment I'd already made in learning related keyboards. It's this learning by route that made it "easy" for me to quickly learn Montage and not have to look much up in order to get around -- to do what I do (which may be different from your use).

I don't have the Melas tools. I just use the demo versions to answer others' questions - but do not use them for anything useful. The tools are there to make things easier. If they're making things harder (for you) - why use them?

Music is strictly a hobby for me. It's very clear to me that I don't have the talent to be any kind of professional musician.

I started in 2011 with a Motif XF. The learning curve for the first couple of years was amazingly steep. It took a long time for me to figure out (with excellent help at the time from the folks on motifator.com, including Bad Mister) what the Motif XF was and how to use it. A couple of years in I started with Cubase, and ran into another amazingly steep learning curve. Just to preserve my own sanity during these initial years, I concentrated solely on MIDI. I didn't pay any attention at all to audio tracks or audio processing.

Starting around 2015, I started getting into doing things with audio, which was another learning curve all by itself. And then the Montage came along. At this point I had learned enough about the Yamaha/Steinberg way of doing things that the transition wasn't quite as steep. By sometime in 2017, I had gotten to the point where, when I tried something new, it usually worked instead of sending me into yet another two-week period of figuring out what was going on and how to do whatever it was.

During all of this I spent between a couple of hours and a couple of days per week, depending on how busy I was with my real job, life, etc.

It's been a lot of fun, mixed in with a lot of hitting my head against various walls. Fortunately for me, I'm a computer professional so at least I have some skills I can use to figure these things out. My friend the psychotherapist and guitar player often tells me that he wonders how anyone who isn't a computer expert can manage to learn to use these things. I wonder that myself. I suspect that many musicians don't ever get past a very rudimentary skill level.

thank´s for your answers, you make me feel less stupid. I´ve been doing homerecording since the early 90ies. starting with 4 track cassette, then the 8 track digital workstation, and then the PC. I only did audio in the past because I never understood anything about midi. I played guitars and I also used the yamaha DX7, which I recorded only as audio. I never understood FM synthesis and since there was no interrnet with tutorials and forums, I was never tempted to even try and just used presets.

but things have become more and more complex, of course. to me right now it seems that it simply never ends. as soon as I learn one thing, there comes the next update, there comes the next feature, there comes soundmondo, a new john melas tool and so on..... a new library, more and more sounds, too many for me to ever even hear....

when you tell me that most musicians probably don´t get past the rudimentary skills and that you probably have to be a computer expert, then I feel less awful. cos I had the impression that I´m just much more stupid than everyone else in this forum. and that I´m getting too old to understand all this software.

There's a big difference between first chair french horn player in the symphony vs. a synth player. Depending on where you are, as a synth player, in the success spectrum - you either have someone else that can program your gear - or you "have" to do it yourself (if it's going to get done or if needed and not sticking to presets). A musician who focuses on synthesizers is different than other musicians in the technology spectrum. All musicians with talent and drive do their best to get "inside" their instrument of choice. Each instrument has, in it's own arena, novels filled with "technical" requirements. A saxophone player spends a lot of time studying the overtone series, practicing achieving overtones from the lowest fundamentals on the horn on up. There are studies for affecting pitch with the mouthpiece off the horn without using mouth pressure - but with dealing with training your muscles / air passages / etc. behind your mouth. Many more "technical" areas of study that are unique to that particular instrument. It's not computer technical - but it's own brand of technical study nonetheless.

If your instrument happens to be a synth, which today is primarily a computer-based instrument, then the technical study to get "inside" would overlap some fundamentals from the computer/technology industries.

Electric guitarists, at one point, had primarily effects that had knobs to alter some parameters and a button to bypass or bring the effect into the chain. Today, this aspect of playing electric guitar has more choices of effects which themselves are built on computer technology and require a different approach when setting up. Use is mostly the same - the control surface is mostly unchanged and mimics the legacy pedals. Encroachment of computer technology into other instruments is happening. Many traditional instruments have a MIDI counterpart where say a saxophone player with a wind controller now enters also being a synthesizer programmer.

@Gabi OP OQ

A lot of time. It almost seems better to spend time in unlimited chunks, until an understanding comes, rather than limiting to "2 hours, from now... and then each night..."

Setting a tangible goal of understanding, then getting to it, might take a whole evening. Sometimes 10 minutes.

It took me four sittings to understand what Yamaha was trying to make with the Pattern Sequencer. That was AFTER watching 3 videos on it and reading the manual additions that covered it.

The videos were deceptive, they didn't want to reveal what it isn't, and favoured a blissful "wow" over being truly useful, insightful or even vaguely educational.

The manual additions were rudimentary work flows, not explanations and descriptions of capabilities and reasonings for what it is.

That, sadly, must be discovered, largely by ascertaining what it isn't, what it can't do and the ways you can do things "wrongly", with negative and/or unwanted consequences. These are legion.

Unfortunately, this is how a lot of modern tech focused equipment is marketed, promoted and presented. The aspersions about a device's capabilities are deliberately left vague so each will associate their desires with a product's feature lists.

it is possible for a manufacturer to be explicitly informative and empowering of users. However, for the longest time (at least since Microsoft and Adobe rose to prominence), deceptively deliberate ways of implying ease, empowerment and capabilities have been the norm. Mainly so those imaginatively aspiring to use a thing, in ways they envision as normal, pull the trigger, and buy.

Some consider this to be so normal, so utterly entrenched and the "buyer beware" mantra to be so essential to modern life, that they seek opportunities to be indignant and disciplinarian when a customer dares to critique, complain, question or even suggest something could be more truthfully explained, detailed or articulated.

So that little voice inside your head that keeps saying "this should be easier than this, it feels like I've been tricked..." is not wrong. It most definitely could be easier, and I agree; it should be. You most certainly will have been tricked, in everything from GPS to phone to Apple Music (what an interface!) to Montage and MODX. An exception that proves the rule: Procreate, on iPads. Brilliantly, brutally efficient and effective design and implementation.

you´re right, I´ve been tricked and this should all be easier. the question is wether I should spend the rest of my life struggling with technology or rather just play the ukulele. I don´t know the answer yet.

If you're an Avid user, I'd say: NO. You're not equipped for the hell that is DAW software.

What you've come to rely upon has set you into stone, experienced with an experience that makes sense. You're ruined for almost all other modern software.

If you've gone through the Final Cut 7 to Final Cut Pro X, or to Premiere, you're well equipped and prepped, but need to recalibrate yourself to be prepared for everything being weird, discordant and discombobulating. Also, you need to come to terms with all DAWs having ways to do things "wrongly", and to never be setup correctly, and their connectivity with your gear being unstable.

For some reason, the nerds have ruled music software, uncontested, and never needed to polish the experience for newcomers. Every couple of years a new contender steps into the ring, but each always gets the fundamentals of starting out utterly wrong, often worse than the incumbents. Which is pretty incredible.

If you've grown into Premiere, and never really used other software for your video editing, you're somewhat equipped for music software, but you need to understand that music software is like the effects controls of Premiere... fundamentally screwed up, and a land of lost hope, wherein promise and potential have never been realised.

If you're Mac man, and coming from a Final Cut thinking way, your only hope is Logic. Don't even bother with anything else.

------------

on the Montage, there are three things that need to be understood.

1. Yamaha's programmers don't think for you, they think for themselves about the easiest and laziest way they can add any features and functionality they're tasked with putting into the thing. As a result, nothing works in a sensible, designed or considerate manner. Some of the elements look easy, and even remind you of things that are well designed. But their underlying behaviour will always surprise in a negative way. Nothing has been wrangled into an intuitive, instinctive or naturally empowering experience. Much of the behaviour must be learnt rote, after finding it doing things you didn't want in ways you'd least expect that were the least helpful, and sometimes destructive of your flow.

2. It's primarily a live focused instrument with the incredible ability to make massive soundscapes (despite how attractive this is) as a side perk of this focus on being capable of setting itself into states for live performance. Because of the power, most pro players, live playing specialists, have a technician to setup their Montage, because it's a tedious, time consuming and laborious task, fraught with the failings pointed out in point 1, above.

3. As a synth sound design tool, it's powerful and wonderful, but only in the sense of the sounds. The processes of shaping and creating those sounds is a nightmare of poorly chosen, badly designed and horribly contrived "relationships" and menus that are even more fraught with problems and pitfalls when you try to surface these things to the knobs and dials and SuperKnob. And, all the while, you're always two steps away from accidentally deleting your work, so far. You're sometimes only one step away from doing this, as you move through the Performance mode to get at other parts of your... Performance.

Gabi,
I feel your pain. I come from a video editing background with AfterEffects being my tool for decades. I am really struggling wrapping my mind around the Montage programming architecture. I have dedicated a month to it and am just now grasping the basics of assigning parts and assigning the Super Knob. That said, I have these thoughts.

1. It looks like you have played keyboards before, but if you are still learning, why not learn ONE key only? That is what I did (key of D) and it has worked out brilliantly. Each Performance/part can have it's own transpose built-in so you can have a personal set list that fits you. Purists will probably shake their heads, but why argue with what works?

2. With that in mind, practice with recorded music that you love while transposing the keyboard to fit YOUR key. You will learn much quicker. When you are ready to create a Live Set, THEN customize each performance to your key. To do this, open the Performance, select the first part, click Edit, click Pitch, then adjust Note Shift using the data wheel. Then move to the next part using the Part select buttons on the right.

3. Although the John Melas tools are great. How about delaying using them? Especially if you have not filled up the Live Set banks, just work with the existing structure. Then when organization gets out of hand, the JM tools are there to help.

4. For now, just use the Preset sounds, and gradually learn to adjust them when necessary. Some adjustments are easy, (layering performances, splitting the keyboard, etc) and I can show you some other options as well..

5. By delaying the John Melas tools, sticking to an easy key, delaying the sound programming, you can concentrate on the DAW.

Of course I don't know if this would fit your plan or not, but I hope it helps.

Phil

I like what Jason about aiming for good enough rather than perfection. Voltaire said "Perfect is the enemy of Good". That may take some of the pressure off. Just a thought.

Phil

interesting discussion, I love it. I come from a Final Cut and Premiere background, so I guess I´m somewhat equipped for the nightmare of DAWs 🙂 I will keep struggling. can´t go back anyway. the ukulele just isn´t for me. when I had my first video 8 camcorder in the 80ies and you couldn´t even edit a video and put music over it, I would have dreamed of what´s possible today on a computer. and now I complain about how horrible technology has become. it´s kind of like the book by the Beatles producer George Martin that I read, who said it was so fast and easy to record the first songs, putting a mic in the middle of the room and after 2 takes, that was the single. And with more and more technology, recording a single song started taking days and turned into a nightmare. Yeah, I guess it´s hard for everyone....

If you're still using a Mac, start with Garage Band. It's got more than enough, for most things, and what you learn there can be translated to Logic. It is not nearly as friendly and intuitive as the UI design might lead you to believe. It's also nowhere near as hobbled as iMovie is relative to Final Cut.

It's more like what Final Cut X was (on initial release) to Final Cut 7.

ie Garage Band (on a Mac) is the cuter version of Logic.

Caveat... I haven't tried connecting it to the Montage/MODX. It might struggle with the masses of MIDI data.

Avoid Cubasis and Korg Gadget, their UI designs attempt to make up for and obscure horrible UX, that only gets ever more annoying with use.

yes, Andrew, the thing is that all the Montage tutorials are with Cubase that´s why I switched. Right now, things are working ok, but...there are always bad surprises, like you said "Also, you need to come to terms with all DAWs having ways to do things "wrongly", and to never be setup correctly, and their connectivity with your gear being unstable.". Yeah, I thought I´m the only one...the connectivity is definitely unstable which was my main problem. Being ready to work on a song only to find out that the connectivity with Montage is suddenly corrupted and having to go thru these long forgotten settings AGAIN is terrible.
you´re so right about nerds ruling this business that don´t care about the customer, and it´s everywhere. I bought a new cellphone today and I couldn´t even find out how to insert the SIM card witout googling for a youtube video. No manual, a tiny instruction sheet with drawings that aren´t understandable. And I have to rely on some nice user that doesn´t get paid for this job to show me how to inster the SIM card on youtube. I think this is about the silliest situation with a new technical device I have ever experienced. It´s actually insane.

All of the tutorials, except those that are not:

https://www.yamahasynth.com/montage-category/connecting-montage-and-logic-pro-x
https://www.yamahasynth.com/montage-category/setting-up-montage-with-mainstage
https://www.yamahasynth.com/montage-category/montage-and-ableton-live-basic-setup-part-i
https://www.yamahasynth.com/montage-category/montage-and-ableton-live-basic-setup-part-ii
... and so on.

@ Gabi it takes me 5 efforts to sign into this forum to post, or 4 or 6, each time. Yet I've checked every box for being remembered and always logged in, and am not behind a firewall, nor using a VPN. Don't know why. I'm using vanilla Safari on a vanilla Mac with no plugins and absolutely minimal software installed. it's all bog standard.

Yamaha suggests, very strongly, that all suggestions for updates and improvements be done on Ideascale, a service designed in ways that hide away these sorts of things, probably for fear they might reveal what doesn't work in any given service or product. It operates behind a login.

Its contents aren't transparent to search engine links.

Yamaha owns the company that makes Cubase, and has done for a good long while. So they know a lot about DAWs, and have programmers that are experts in them.

Tutorials for simply getting Montage/MODX happily talking to a DAW start with introductions making excuses and prepping the user for the journey ahead, despite the fact that these things shipped without sequencing and song making because they expected users to use DAWs.

Plugging a MODX or Montage into a computer with a DAW installed, running and the focused app, doesn't come close to bringing the two into a working relationship. The fight is only just beginning.

And makes getting printers to work look like absolute child's play.

... Yamaha owns Cubase, and still can't make the two happily aware of each other. In fact, the loops through which a user must jump to get Cubase working with a MODX or Montage are more than they are for some of the rival DAWs, despite the available "template" projects and their origins from within the same company.

This would be funnier if Yamaha didn't provide a license for a cut down version of their DAW with each Montage and MODX. But they do. So it's just sad.

Using the DAWs one realises why those musicians that overcome the hurdles and learn these things and gain a degree of familiarity, have such contempt for the software, and have no trouble transitioning to other complex creative software. They've already had the worst possible experiences. So, for them, even Alias/Autodesk Maya is intuitive and instinctive. Which it isn't.

It also becomes apparent that there's another group, somewhat of a vocal majority, that consider the horrific unfriendliest aspects of DAWs to be a gatekeeper to their professional lives, a barrier to entry into their "marketplace", and a rite of passage.

Programmers love this, for.two reasons.

1. It makes their lives easier to only tangentially consider the user's experience with their software.

2. Programmers operate in exactly the same manner with regards programming, programming languages, programming paradigms and powers, and their tools.

Each year they create ever more complexity and ever more brittle, broken and bad interfaces to achieving anything via code, and call this "job security".