Genos might as well be called "Tyros 6" just as much as Montage might as well have been called "Motif XE" (embedded memory instead of flash memory). I'm saying this as a matter of product line lineage. This forum has not ever had an arranger keyboard section and, according to the forum organization, Tyros and now Genos are not considered "Synthesizers" like the Motif, MO, S90, and other keyboard lines represented here are. To my knowledge there is not an official Yamaha support message base for Tyros/Genos - although there are several 3rd party support message boards out there for the arranger keyboards.

To the extent that Montage is slight departure from the "workstation" in Motif -- and, yet to be seen, if Genos scoops up any of this "workstation" functionality --- or if the "workstation" pieces left off Montage are delegated to the PC without Genos adding these on-board is a bit yet to be seen without gory manual details. That said, like Montage is not a "huge" departure from Motif - I take it Genos is not going to be enough of a departure from Tyros to motivate a message board added here.

However, it may be wise (at some point) for Yamaha to provide an official support channel for the arranger line in order to spark more marketing interest around that line. It could help sales to "cross-contaminate" the excitement from synth to arranger lines.

Someone else can do a more extensive list of "arranger" vs. "synth" - but at a high level I see arranger keyboards such as Genos as having more extensive response to keyboard patterns ("left hand" chord shapes) to the outcome ("styles", super articulation). While better at recognizing patterns and having more articulation choices - how this works (in the arranger) is more fixed than in the synth line. The synth line allows for deeper programming/control and arranger more fixed in terms of programming choices - but these fixed pieces themselves perhaps going "deeper" in terms of "reach".

Going one-by-one down the feature list - there are lots of differences. Some of the "multi-pad" stuff on Genos you can emulate with arps on Montage - but there are some limitations. Since Tyros 5 is fully documented - one could run down the list of differences/similarities and come 90% close to a comparison between Genos and Montage.

Genos is Tyros in black with double of pcm samples size of Tyros 5 so about 1.5 GB and sounds are polished to extreme 32 bit big screen ect so very user friendly if you are composer or arranger user this is the best one on the market .
Price is 4250£ I think now Montage got much more pcm memory and FM as we all know and with cubase there is nothing you cannot do and to me you can be as original as you want while Genos with all those perfected sounds and patterns does not encourage you to be creative in my mind so very different .
And let's not forget the price.

Well I honestly think MOTF XF is the best synth/workstation Yamaha made so far. Non of Montage and Genos meets my expectations. Although I'm sure Yamaha did a huge survey while making both of these keyboards.

The following is my opinion:

Well something I don't understand is isn't an arranger supposed to be good at arranging and a synth good in making superior sounds? Yamaha puts the best samples and AEM they have in Genos and the arranging capabilities of Yamaha arrangers hasn't improved much more than a decade! No pads, no block sequencing and many more features that shouldn't take Yamaha even a year to accomplish implementing them.

Well, in the mean time we are not able to create anything more than eXpanded Articulation voices on XF and Montage. I would love to see a level of professionalism and special capabilities such as being able to create ensemble orchestration in Yamaha's synths which I believe Yamaha can do much better than what we see in Montage. I like to have Violin1, Violin2, Viola etc sections sampled separately. I'd also like to see the same thing for brass, wind and reed instruments. Revo drums in Montage please. I'd like to see a guitar mode, drawbar organ etc in Montage. This list is pretty long!

If Yamaha has removed the sequencer from Montage then they should add other capabilities to. I want to see the best of Yamaha voices in Montage that doesn't exist in Genos! After all it is a synthesizer!

Then I want to see a block sequencer/arranger in Genos that I can create/arrange patterns live in it. I want to change the chord for the patters if they have a root key! I would love to see a 4x8 pad area on Genos instead of style buttons. The buttons that I can program what to do, fillin A,B,C are just names who cares? I saw Casio casio mz x500 a few months ago and I was surprised how they tried to add some modern feature to an arranger and it is really good!

Anyway, for now, I'm sticking to my MOTIF XF. MONTAGE and Genos are not for me.

An inevitable discussion, I would imagine.

What I’d like see is less “guessing” about what the corporate intentions were and the silly conspiracy theory type stuff that discussions like this always dissolve into. If we all agree that stating what we each think Yamaha should make makes us feel better but may have no basis in reality or no possibility of ever happening because none of us has all the information necessary to actually make that happen.

We can all only speak about what we do musically, and what we may want personally. (And for me that’s interesting). But when someone tries to speak for more than themselves, from this side, it is less interesting, because it no longer is constructive from that point on.

“Everybody wants...” instead of “I write music, I need...” I tend to read the latter with interest -it’s going to be musical in nature and the former is often filled with that individual’s thoughts on how it would be if they ruled the world or made the decisions. Those discussions can be interesting but mostly they hardly ever lead to anything constructive.

If there were any ground rules (loosely) let’s agree:
the MONTAGE is not a Motif XF, nor is it a Motif anything
the GENOS is not a Tyros 5, nor is it a Tyros anything

The change in name, is not trivial. It is expensive, time consuming (both names were leaked by musicians working in the Patent Office years ago) but is done to signify a change in direction. A change in concept, focus. If we wanted you to think it was the same we’d have kept the series name, (duh!)

Buying an Arranger when you're focused on Sound Design, would be as wrong as buying a keyboard that focuses on Sound Design when you need an Arranger. The move from Music Production Synthesizer (which is what the Motif XF was) with its Integrated Sampling Sequencer, to Music Synthesizer (which is what MONTAGE is) with its Motion Control Engine is significant. Certainly more than enough for it not to be called Motif XYZ.

Likewise, the change in focus and concept in GENOS over the focus and direction of Tyros is just as significant and profound, certainly enough to warranty a series name change. Of significance, the video of the Nashville songwriter (Beth Nielsen Chapman), who can quickly recall a general music genre, then start to customize details of the accompaniment. It maybe hard to translate but the interaction between the musical Parts is much more controllable. These moveable parts can inspire those who write music for a living.

If you are an “Arranger person” that does the traditional “Arranger” thing - creating real time backing tracks on a high level... then you’ll understand what’s happening in GENOS, you’ll understand where it is built up from... you’ll also see that as a writer of songs, GENOS becomes an unbelievable resource of musical content, stretching across recent music history... inspiring accompaniment. Sonically breath taking, of course.

Like in MONTAGE, if you get into constructing, for lack of a better term, ‘musical montages’ that include multiple Parts, multiple arpeggios, Motion Sequences, etc... when designing sounds, you can create these incredible sound scapes that are compelling, inspiring. Breath taking. (I get calls from folks who get lost in the ‘Tage for hours at a time... it can be inspiring)!

If your writing music for hire, jingles, pop tunes, etc. having a GENOS as a tool would make sense... just how quickly can one put together an authentic sounding 60’s or 80’s track?
If your writing music for hire, and your clients are looking for sci-fi, or music for games and gaming consoles, a MONTAGE would would make sense... “... can you make me the sound of ping-pong balls bouncing on clouds?”

Focus of the content, flexibility of what and how you get involved in editing, reformatting, customizing the content that is provided... these are the things to consider between the two instruments. The two instruments are very, very different when viewed this way. If your only concern is which has the best piano sound... we can talk about that when we decide if coke is better than pepsi... it’s important to buy the instrument because it meets your requirements.

Those are broad strokes. Is there a customer overlap? Of course. Could you justify having both, sure. Are they the same? No. Will you recognize certain items/functions/features reshaped/reformatted in each, sure... it is the same company. But try to see the FOCUS each has, then see if what you do now fits. If not, see if what is on offer (which the company surely thinks is “new”) is actually some thing you may never have seen or used before. But don’t dismiss it based only on what you already know or have used in the past. If that is all you have to offer (it’s just less interesting in the discussion) I guess I’m trying to say don’t dismiss something without giving it a fair chance.

If you can’t afford both, not to worry, you have a lot of company, there. But if you make a living writing music, the technology in these two products represent the cutting edge - each has a focus... one on do-it-yourself sound design, the other toward the craft of writing songs.

If that’s not what you do, sticking with what works for you is not a bad thing, no need to apologize when a new product is not for you.
The focus of the Motif series was based around the ISS approach to music assembly... sampling and sequencing, both separately and together.
The focus of Tyros series was based around the real time song performance... live interaction with the tech to construct/arrange a song.
The new focus of MONTAGE is based on creative sound design utilizing the previous series' tech and combining it with an FM-X engine. Interaction between the engines is achieved via a new controller matrix that includes motion control, side chain modulation, etc,. The focus of GENOS is based on the real time song construction concept of its previous series, but with a greater concentration (focus) on fashioning an inspiring backing environment in which to write songs.

This is not to say that any of these products can’t move in many directions, and nothing says you can’t use them to do what they are not necessarily focused on... these are broad general strokes. The devil is in the details and the details are going to be slightly different for each of us.

The GENOS is not a synthesizer (reason it is not included here on Yamaha Synth), not like the MONTAGE is a synthesizer.
Editing at the Element level is not something you’ll expect to see ... selecting which Element sounds *when*, is not something you’ll expect to see... if you know Synthesizers you know MONTAGE is a synthesizer.

Very well put Bad Mister...i have Montage & T.O.T.l Arranger from korg (Genos is a contender pending some demo time with it)... most important of all is the positive effects of playing or creating Music with whatever type of keyboard we may have and that is what matters most of all... So who ever you are or wherever your background with music you may be from and with out diminishing anybody... then the instruments we use are just the vehicles to get us to that destination and both Concepts discussed here together or on their own are great ways to do that ... Music is the language of the Universe ((((A@424hz)))) and the language of music can cross many barriers and that is what this world needs more than ever to save us from are self.......Great forum, I would be lost with out It with my Montage...all the best to you all 🙂

Hi, as always a very interesting read from Bad Mister. Can totally see about the 'focus' for these keyboards, I have a Montage 8 and a Tyros 5 and use them both very differently and sometimes together. Seems a lot of people would like everything all in one keyboard without realizing how convoluted the operation of the machine would be. Sometimes you have to narrow the field and specialize to get the best operating and sound from your chosen keyboard. After reading Bad Mister's post it makes me think all the more that having the Genos on this board would make sense. I think after all that if the CP can be represented here, why not the Genos? Being able to have the Yamaha team here answering and helping would I think go a long way towards recognizing the arrangers as a serious professional keyboard, instead of hearing it being so dismissively referred to as just a 'one man band' by musicians who should know better. Anyway love my boards and just wanted to add my 2 cents.

Christopher.

I'm curious about what the Genos can do as a workstation.
The sounds from the Genos like totally amazing same as montage.

I'm still guessing what it means for those whom go for Genos and
what it as a workstation can do for them. It's not fully clear
what the video teasers convey then the song writing part.

If the power of song writing has someone unleash for what the Genos
can do for them I want to see more how. I like the knobs the menu and dials of
it and can imagine the wildest possibilities it can pour out.

To me the montage is a step for my "curious own style of genre create
one unique " sound for my song and build around it add movement and such.

Montage is the synth I wanted every performance inside of it is
like a template for me to start building until I'm verse enough
to translate my sound idea's out of it.

I'm happy something else finally take shape as "different" in the synth
and keyboard world like the Montage. The Genos is mysterious at the
moment.

Thanks, Bad Mister!

I recall Phil's past messages saying, essentially, focus on your musical process and needs first. Study and play the instruments. Try the workflow. Select the instrument which best fits your needs and process as a musician. Sure both synthesizers and arrangers make joyful noise, but each kind of instrument is targeted for certain needs, process and workflow.

Badmister acknowledges that there are people who really need both kinds of instrument: synthesizer and arranger. True that. I could be one of them. 🙂 The natural inclination is to say, "Why not put everything in one keyboard and make me happy." That would kind of ignore how micro-fragmented musicians and the electronic instrument markets are. There are arranger users who would be utterly turned off by certain synth complexities. And vice versa.

I would like to mention that the Genos Owner's Manual is now available. The Owner's Manual is mainly about playing with one section about Quick Record.

The Reference Manual is in the final draft stage (according to European Dealers at the time of this writing). The Reference Manual will contain details about the sequencer and voice editing. The Data List will appear shortly, too.

In terms of on-line community, I recommend the PSR Tutorial Formum. This is an international community of pro and amateur musicians who play, develop styles, write songs, and everything else in the musical milieu -- all with PSR and Tyros instruments. Some folks own and play Montage, Motif, and MOX, too. (Myself included.)

Yamaha's participation on the Forum is always welcomed and warmly received.

Genos and Montage both have a bright future. Both are based on "new generation" technology with more to come.

All the best -- pj

Hi everyone. I've owned a Korg Kronos 2 for a couple of years and last year also picked up a Yamaha Montage. I have to admit that despite owning two of the top synths on the market, I didn't find myself making as much use of them and exploring their capability. The Kronos felts like operating a computer (well it is) and despite its stellar sound, it didn't spark my inspiration or enable me to capture my creativity and ideas quickly. The Montage was to give me the wonderful orchestral sounds that I love from Yamaha keyboards. I previously owned a Motif, so naturally I had great expectations of the Montage as its replacement. Whilst the sounds of the Montage are really wonderful and the FM engine is very nice, I have to admit to finding the interface a bit hard to penetrate and missed having a sequencer. Most of all though I found the workflow with my DAW really difficult (you can't easily assign midi channel numbers to different parts). Now I also use an arranger at church (PSR S950) and I've owned many arrangers from Yamaha in the past, including early Tyros models. The Genos has already persuaded me to replace those three keys (Kronos, Montage and PSR) as I feel it not only offers amazing quality sounds, but it has the tools and expansion abilities that I also like to have. The 76 note keyboard, aftertouch, stunning Yamaha acoustic and natural sounds, the super articulation features which you don't get on Montage, the Revo drums, nearly 30 top end insertion DSP effects, a 16 track recorder I can use at the touch of a button, built in 60GB storage, the list goes on. But most of all I have grown to love the user interfaces on Yamaha arrangers and a quick browse at the now available user guide has convinced me that this is the board for me. Ok I will miss the FM synth and editing capabilities of the Korg and Montage, but do I really use them often? No, most of the time its just a tweak of the cut off, maybe adjust the envelope slightly.... With the growth of software plugins in my DAW and modules like the Roland Integra, I feel the Genos ticks all the boxes and should give me everything I need as a home studio musician but with a great sound and feature list I can confidently take to a gig or church performance. Yes you could probably recreate what the Genos does with all these separate keyboards but the fact is that you probably wouldn't, because it takes a lot of time and effort. The Genos is about making everything quick and easy, getting ideas down quickly, getting you inspired and so on. I am really excited by it and looking forward to playing it!

Simon
SVPworld

Bad Mister wrote:

An inevitable discussion, I would imagine.

What I’d like see is less “guessing” about what the corporate intentions were and the silly conspiracy theory type stuff that discussions like this always dissolve into. If we all agree that stating what we each think Yamaha should make makes us feel better but may have no basis in reality or no possibility of ever happening because none of us has all the information necessary to actually make that happen.

We can all only speak about what we do musically, and what we may want personally. (And for me that’s interesting). But when someone tries to speak for more than themselves, from this side, it is less interesting, because it no longer is constructive from that point on.

“Everybody wants...” instead of “I write music, I need...” I tend to read the latter with interest -it’s going to be musical in nature and the former is often filled with that individual’s thoughts on how it would be if they ruled the world or made the decisions. Those discussions can be interesting but mostly they hardly ever lead to anything constructive.

If there were any ground rules (loosely) let’s agree:
the MONTAGE is not a Motif XF, nor is it a Motif anything
the GENOS is not a Tyros 5, nor is it a Tyros anything

The change in name, is not trivial. It is expensive, time consuming (both names were leaked by musicians working in the Patent Office years ago) but is done to signify a change in direction. A change in concept, focus. If we wanted you to think it was the same we’d have kept the series name, (duh!)

Buying an Arranger when you're focused on Sound Design, would be as wrong as buying a keyboard that focuses on Sound Design when you need an Arranger. The move from Music Production Synthesizer (which is what the Motif XF was) with its Integrated Sampling Sequencer, to Music Synthesizer (which is what MONTAGE is) with its Motion Control Engine is significant. Certainly more than enough for it not to be called Motif XYZ.

Likewise, the change in focus and concept in GENOS over the focus and direction of Tyros is just as significant and profound, certainly enough to warranty a series name change. Of significance, the video of the Nashville songwriter (Beth Nielsen Chapman), who can quickly recall a general music genre, then start to customize details of the accompaniment. It maybe hard to translate but the interaction between the musical Parts is much more controllable. These moveable parts can inspire those who write music for a living.

If you are an “Arranger person” that does the traditional “Arranger” thing - creating real time backing tracks on a high level... then you’ll understand what’s happening in GENOS, you’ll understand where it is built up from... you’ll also see that as a writer of songs, GENOS becomes an unbelievable resource of musical content, stretching across recent music history... inspiring accompaniment. Sonically breath taking, of course.

Like in MONTAGE, if you get into constructing, for lack of a better term, ‘musical montages’ that include multiple Parts, multiple arpeggios, Motion Sequences, etc... when designing sounds, you can create these incredible sound scapes that are compelling, inspiring. Breath taking. (I get calls from folks who get lost in the ‘Tage for hours at a time... it can be inspiring)!

If your writing music for hire, jingles, pop tunes, etc. having a GENOS as a tool would make sense... just how quickly can one put together an authentic sounding 60’s or 80’s track?
If your writing music for hire, and your clients are looking for sci-fi, or music for games and gaming consoles, a MONTAGE would would make sense... “... can you make me the sound of ping-pong balls bouncing on clouds?”

Focus of the content, flexibility of what and how you get involved in editing, reformatting, customizing the content that is provided... these are the things to consider between the two instruments. The two instruments are very, very different when viewed this way. If your only concern is which has the best piano sound... we can talk about that when we decide if coke is better than pepsi... it’s important to buy the instrument because it meets your requirements.

Those are broad strokes. Is there a customer overlap? Of course. Could you justify having both, sure. Are they the same? No. Will you recognize certain items/functions/features reshaped/reformatted in each, sure... it is the same company. But try to see the FOCUS each has, then see if what you do now fits. If not, see if what is on offer (which the company surely thinks is “new”) is actually some thing you may never have seen or used before. But don’t dismiss it based only on what you already know or have used in the past. If that is all you have to offer (it’s just less interesting in the discussion) I guess I’m trying to say don’t dismiss something without giving it a fair chance.

If you can’t afford both, not to worry, you have a lot of company, there. But if you make a living writing music, the technology in these two products represent the cutting edge - each has a focus... one on do-it-yourself sound design, the other toward the craft of writing songs.

If that’s not what you do, sticking with what works for you is not a bad thing, no need to apologize when a new product is not for you.
The focus of the Motif series was based around the ISS approach to music assembly... sampling and sequencing, both separately and together.
The focus of Tyros series was based around the real time song performance... live interaction with the tech to construct/arrange a song.
The new focus of MONTAGE is based on creative sound design utilizing the previous series' tech and combining it with an FM-X engine. Interaction between the engines is achieved via a new controller matrix that includes motion control, side chain modulation, etc,. The focus of GENOS is based on the real time song construction concept of its previous series, but with a greater concentration (focus) on fashioning an inspiring backing environment in which to write songs.

This is not to say that any of these products can’t move in many directions, and nothing says you can’t use them to do what they are not necessarily focused on... these are broad general strokes. The devil is in the details and the details are going to be slightly different for each of us.

The GENOS is not a synthesizer (reason it is not included here on Yamaha Synth), not like the MONTAGE is a synthesizer.
Editing at the Element level is not something you’ll expect to see ... selecting which Element sounds *when*, is not something you’ll expect to see... if you know Synthesizers you know MONTAGE is a synthesizer.

Thanks for you comprehensive response Phil and my apology if I mistakenly mentioned something which was not true. I really appreciate your comment and I'm always grateful for all the things I've learnt here. Some of the points are wrong I've checked them out too to learn more about Montage. My point though is not to bash Yamaha. Most of my points are what I miss mostly in MOTIF. Of course it doesn't mean there is no work around and I also agree that MONTAGE is still a very good synthesizer. But I guess (and I'm not sure if it's possible or not) that some of the nice features could be added to to complement it. I know that there is no machine out there to produce the same FM sounds like MONTAGE does. I also bought two Yamaha guitars and a saxophone for myself and a friend recently! because they're the best bang for the buck! You can't beat them. It's the same with Montage, but I guess when I bough my MOTIF XF it was a bigger upgrade for me.

The Genos manual is available:

https://usa.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/7/1130977/genos_en_om_b0.pdf

http://sandsoftwaresound.net/tag/genos/

Bad Mister wrote:

An inevitable discussion, I would imagine.

Phil, i can see where the Montage is now, all the upgrades make it a great performing instrument as well as a top knotch extension of a home studio
The Montage has grown immensely over the last 2 years, and its almost all you need as a performing musician.
Unless you would like to use arranger features as a solo band.
Then you need 2 instruments

The Genos as its specs currently became online is still a diamond in the rough..
I can see how they try to pull new people into the Genos concept..

But when people want to use the Genos as the scratchpad and easy tool for creation
Wouldnt it be logical it also had something like montage connect
So the producer can export his creation to the daw for deep editing and finalizing
A tool like Montage connect would be very welcome..
the daw integration is not only important for song writers.
But also for people that want to eddit their recorded audio and midi so they can use it in their live performances.
As the Motif Cubase combination learns us, you really want to edit midi and audio inside the daw.

Also i really like then new function to play arps...
Espescially when solo performing, late night at a wedding and you want to play some EDM
Those arps are really welcome.
But not being able to create your own arps, nor upload user creations makes the whole feature more like a toy.
i would like to have atleast 2 arps controllable in real time, and the abbility to load user arps
I think thats the least one would expect to be able to do on a workstation.
The Genos comes with a grand total of only 216 arps.

And my 3rd main gripe, why wouldn't an arranger player want to use deep sound edditing features?
Why would't you want it to be a synth to, because when making music and performances, sound creation is just as important
Its one of the main reason i as a longtime yamaha arranger owner, currently use a Korg PA4x, because i can do my own sound design there, making my sound quite unique.
Can you give me a single reason why the Genos should not have an edditable synth engine as well?
Also in the Genos potential user group, you have snorcklers and deep divers.
And those deep divers would really like a deep editable engine
The Yem is a small step in the right direction, but its offline edditing, i would like an online edditing version being able to edit and save sounds inside the Genos, and not relying on uploading a whole pack again.

Now i do understand that i am not the typical Arranger player
I have allways been using an 88 key synth workstation combined with an arranger.
And there is a reason behind that, i use features from both worlds.

I would love to have features from both worlds into my single all can do keyboard..
But it seems thats not going to happen.

The Genos however could be that instrument if they only changed those 3 things i mentioned above.
And best thing is, all 3 things in my vision could be added trough software updates.
And now comes the essence of the question.
Will Yamaha upgrade the Genos over time as they did with the Montage?
And would they be willing to add major features to pull in new potential customers?

In the end, i think the constant updates where really good for the Montage and the community...

I asked a similar question about Tyros 5 vs Motif XF a few years ago on motifator. Bad Mister gave me some good advice there about creating performances by using MIDI files of songs.

I just reread that advice along with some associated threads on motifator, and convinced myself that a adding a Genos to my rig is most likely not necessary. Of course, that all may change if I get a chance to sit down with a Genos at some local music store. But there has never been an opportunity to try out a Tyros locally, so I won't hold my breath.