AnotherScott:
"How so? I don't think Roland calls it that, and AFAIK, it lacks the defining feature of a workstations... a fully editable, linear multitrack sequencer. (Same as with the Montage/MODX, even though both have other kinds of sequencer options available.)"

Granted, it's not fluid, but you can see each note, in Step Sequencer and TRS-whatever-it-is-called mode, and then use primitive means to find/see and then delete/replace notes.

This is an enormous step on from MODX/Montage Recording and Jobs menu, both in terms of initial input exactitude and subsequent editing.

I'm with you on wanting this to be extended to a fully linear, multitrack sequencer, via touch and knobs like in the AKAI MPC Live etc range.

JASON: From a pure oscillator to key ratio - the two instruments are equivalent. Then the Montages offers twice as many oscillators - the second half available through external control. The loop back cable is a hack that's available - but the "front door" usage would be to have an external controller addressing these oscillators...In this regard, there is no need for a loopback cable unless you want to achieve twice the oscillators available to Fantom under direct local keyboard control.

That's an interesting way to look at it. But, realistically, I'm not sure it's very useful to equate the 64 keyboard-controllable Roland Partials (16 parts x 4 Partials each) with the 64 keyboard-controllable Yamaha Elements (8 parts x 8 Elements each)... from a musical (rather than technical) perspective, you're controlling 16 simultaneously independently keyboard addressable sound programs on the Roland vs a max of 8 simultaneously independently keyboard addressable sound programs on the Yamaha (even if those individual 8-element Yamaha sound programs may sometimes be more sophisticated in their assembly than the equivalent 4-partial Roland sound programs).

I have found in my last 2 Performances (Songs) I've worked on that I could easily have used a 9th PART under KBD CTRL, but had to make some compromises & sequence an instrument/sound that I was planning to play on the keys, which I was happy with in the end. And I don't expect anything more from the Montage than what I already have to work with & anything new to me is a bonus; however this was the exact reason why I added this idea below on Idealscale, and why I think everyone with a Montage/MODX could benefit from it...plus it would change the equation when comparing the Montage to the Fantom, because then the possibilities on the Montage become much more varied and would basically give us additional options to have more than just 8 PARTs under KBD CTRL. A single AWM2 PART alone in a Performance on the Montage could have an exponential number of possibilities (2^8 = 256) that could be changed via the Scene buttons:
Add Element ON/OFF Switch Control to 'Scenes'
https://yamahasynth.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Add-Element-ON-OFF-Switch-Control-to-Scenes/259029-45978

Surely it would make for an even more interesting conversation/argument when comparing the Montage and Fantom. Each Element of PARTs 1-8 on the Montage (if using AWM2 PARTs) could then be seen/used as a separate voice/instrument, which would give us 64 single Element options to choose from that could be under KBD CTRL. Looking at all the various combinations/permutations!? of Elements that could then be configured in the 8 Scenes, it would give us 2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 possibilities to choose from in each Performance... 😉

because then the possibilities on the Montage become much more varied and would basically give us additional options to have more than just 8 PARTs under KBD CTRL. A single AWM2 PART alone in a Performance on the Montage could have an exponential number of possibilities (2^8 = 256) that could be changed via the Scene buttons:
Add Element ON/OFF Switch Control to 'Scenes'
https://yamahasynth.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Add-Element-ON-OFF-Switch-Control-to-Scenes/259029-45978

Given what my naive mind has recently learnt about the polyphony being x Elements, the ability to turn Elements on and off and store this via Scenes seems like something a Product Manager would have had at or near the top of Scene determinants, from an efficiency point of view.

Given that Elements can be ANY sound AND contribute to polyphony count, a Product Manager would have had Scene storage of their state at the top, and users should expect it.

In the absence of a Product Manager, this kind of dismissal-of-the-obvious frequently occurs amongst software engineers, because they're not going to want to do more work than they must.

And this obvious oversight of an ideal functionality, that's also necessary for complex arrangements wanting to get the most out of the equipment, is hidden on IdeaScale.

Exactly as Yamaha wants it to be.

ANDREW: Given what my naive mind has recently learnt about the polyphony being x Elements, the ability to turn Elements on and off and store this via Scenes seems like something a Product Manager would have had at or near the top of Scene determinants, from an efficiency point of view.

I don't really know what you're getting at here, in terms of "efficiency." Elements use polyphony when they are triggered; they don't use polyphony when they are not triggered. If you have a piano sound that only triggers a particular element when the key is played within a certain velocity range, it will only use polyphony when you hit the key within that velocity range.

While one could use elements within a single part in a limited fashion for entirely disparate sounds (as opposed to components of a single sound)--and in fact some sounds are programmed that way--it's a kind of niche-y application. Compared to making the different sounds their own parts, you're losing a lot (like effects capabilities, for example), because ultimately, at some level, the 8 elements of a Part will still be treated as a single entity. Most often, combining disparate sounds at the element level is a more complicated way to get a less satisfactory result.

ANDREW:Given that Elements can be ANY sound AND contribute to polyphony count, a Product Manager would have had Scene storage of their state at the top, and users should expect it.

Again, I'm not sure where you're coming from. i.e. what the relationship is between your "given" and the importance of having them therefore switchable via scenes. There would usually be a better (simpler and more flexible) way to accomplish what appears to be your goal (of combining X sounds within Y amount of polyphony). "Ganging up" sounds in a single part at the element level does not save any polyphony compared to having them in separate parts.

Real-time control at the element level does exist. On one hand, you have the drawbar organ emulations, where you use the sliders as "drawbars" by manipulating levels at the element level, and they use polyphony for all the elements at once. OTOH, you have the programs that use AF buttons to invoke alternate articulations, which is similar to the idea of being able to switch them in or out with scenes, and then an element is only invoked (and thereby only using polyphony) when its AF status is engaged.

Yamaha's "elements" are like Roland "partials" and Korg's "multisamples" -- all these companies permit editing at this level, and all of them are similarly counted when it comes to polyphony, and all of them can be triggered (or not) based on certain playing conditions. The basic architecture has been around for decades. But relatively few users get into programming that far under the hood.

I'm not sure your workarounds to things you've presumed, on the basis of that which you're not sure of, aren't just solutions to straw men of your own making for reasons that I'm not sure about.

Given what my naive mind has recently learnt about the polyphony being x Elements, the ability to turn Elements on and off and store this via Scenes seems like something a Product Manager would have had at or near the top of Scene determinants, from an efficiency point of view.

Given that Elements can be ANY sound AND contribute to polyphony count, a Product Manager would have had Scene storage of their state at the top, and users should expect it.

In the absence of a Product Manager, this kind of dismissal-of-the-obvious frequently occurs amongst software engineers, because they're not going to want to do more work than they must.

And this obvious oversight of an ideal functionality, that's also necessary for complex arrangements wanting to get the most out of the equipment, is hidden on IdeaScale.

Exactly as Yamaha wants it to be.

Interesting that you mention polyphony, as it was THE reason I went with Yamaha's Montage over Korg's Kronos in the end. The Kronos guys on the Korg forum told me that I'd be better off with the Montage for what I want to use it for (using multiple engines at the same time with maximum polyphony so that I can sequence almost everything, and be able to play several layered/split sounds at the same time on one single keyboard). The Kronos design is lowest common denominator polyphony, such that your polyphony depends on the lowest polyphony engine you are using, whereas the Montage was designed for additive polyphony whereby using more engines increases the number of notes you can play, and in the case of the Montage it doubles polyphony. Much better design IMHO.

So I am quite happy with the Montage, and as I said, I don't expect anything more from Yamaha than what I already have, so anything that is added is a bonus for me. But since their roadmap allows for us to make suggestions on what we'd like to see added in terms of features & functionality, why not put forth ideas and see if others agree and Up Vote them. I already got KBD CTRL in Scenes, enhanced pitch bend, saving SONGs with a Performance, and several other things/effects that I use that I didn't have, nor expect to when I purchased the Montage...but now I make use of these quite a bit.

Maybe I'm naive, but control over the Elements in Scenes wasn't even a consideration to me until several months back when I first thought of it. So I wouldn't consider it an obvious oversight of something that's necessary such that we should expect to have it.
I'm sure Yamaha's engineers have had this idea on a list somewhere for years, as they understand the synth far more technically than I'd ever be able to.

Ideal functionality is somewhat subjective. I could say that ideally I would like to have 10 times the polyphony than I currently do.
The Montage builds on what the Motif's built up over the years (minus some of the sequencing functionality, although I don't use onboard sequencers...I use a DAW), and they've added a fair bit of new sounds and functionality, while leaving it open to add more and give us a chance to prioritize what new things are added. Personally, I like this concept.

Please don't consider my gripes to be me being unhappy with what we've got.

My gripe is with what it could (and should) have been.

And past tense is the key. Don't think Yamaha's going anywhere with the Montage/MODX other than a VA type thing for the Montage to give it a final sales fling - into the period of uncertainty that is the now and rest of the decade - whilst Yamaha tries to figure out what to become in terms of instruments-as-a-service.

But my guess is that whatever new "engine" the Montage gets, it will be about as polished as the (insanely ridiculous) half baked (at best) FM morphing thing. Consider the person that thought that was an idea worthy of spending development time on - that person holds sway. And that's the kind of deep thought that's happening over at Yamaha HQ.

Even the professional demo specialists were struggling to seem enthused by it. I went back and watched some of their videos to see if I'd missed something magical in there, only to realise they were all as bewildered and disappointed as everyone else, but had to feign enthusiasm. Which makes the vids at least fun to watch, in a morbid kind of way.

There's so much low hanging fruit improvements that could be easily made to the MODX and Montage that after this length of time it's obvious they have no care, and no need to make these things significantly better.

There's a Shift button that does nearly nothing.

When you do use it for something like copying, it doesn't propagate meaningful values for destinations, often providing choices that overwrite existing locations when there's empty destinations available.

The Category button auto-selects!????

And doesn't remember the previous filtering, nor category!???

Instead it tries to guess, and auto-selects???

There's no auto-save of sound editing activity to a temp Performance.

And there's no UNDO!???

No low contrast or dark theme for night/darkened environments, nor screen dimming.

These things are truly bizarre omissions in the MODX, and absolutely insane in the pro level Montage.

Which is how old?

Please don't consider my gripes to be me being unhappy with what we've got.
My gripe is with what it could (and should) have been.
And past tense is the key.

As my wife likes to say "If wishes were horse!"
You can always find things to wish it could or should have been, but I think it's better to have the outlook of being happy with what you've got and be excited about what might come in the future.

Don't think Yamaha's going anywhere with the Montage/MODX other than a VA type thing for the Montage to give it a final sales fling - into the period of uncertainty that is the now and rest of the decade - whilst Yamaha tries to figure out what to become in terms of instruments-as-a-service.

I don't think adding a VA engine to the Montage is the final thing for the Montage. Maybe it will be, but I bet it isn't.
I think Yamaha are already showing that they have figured out what they want to become & it shows via their roadmap, which is a shift in paradigm. Roland saw Yamaha's new way of delivering a Synth that keeps the same hardware longer and provides changes via software engineering. Now Roland is doing the exact same thing, as they put out a product that was far more unfinished than the Montage ever was, and have been adding features and engines in recent updates.

But my guess is that whatever new "engine" the Montage gets, it will be about as polished as the (insanely ridiculous) half baked (at best) FM morphing thing. Consider the person that thought that was an idea worthy of spending development time on - that person holds sway. And that's the kind of deep thought that's happening over at Yamaha HQ.

How polished will depend on whether they have the technology already or not, or if they are just developing it for the first time using the Montage. I suspect they already have a VA engine fairly well polished, so it will be quite good out of the gate when they add it in the next OS update. Sure there will likely be some tweaking in future updates after that, but what gets tweaked first, we get to have a say in that thanks to Ideascale and these forums. Yamaha have made it clear that they are listening to us and have proven it several times already on the Montage/MODX.

There's so much low hanging fruit improvements that could be easily made to the MODX and Montage that after this length of time it's obvious they have no care, and no need to make these things significantly better.

It's a matter of prioritizing what is most important to do first. If a new VA engine is top of the list, then they are going to keep some of the low hanging fruit on the back burner in order to focus on the VA. There are only X number of engineers working on these synths and programming/testing takes time.

There's also the innovation factor, whereby they want to give the world new synthesis functionality that has never been done before, while also giving us some low hanging fruit and some big VA stuff. FM Morph is a good example of this, and they will likely enhance & improve it greatly in future releases, and no other synth out there can do what FM Morph does. But the Extended LFO and Wave Folder have to be a couple of my favorites. I've never heard another synth do what Extended LFO does, and it's awesome!

There's a Shift button that does nearly nothing.

I use the Shift button a lot and think it's quite useful for Copying PARTs, or sometimes even better, Exchanging PARTs. Copying/Exchanging Elements or even FM-X Operators. When I do FM programming, I usually find several FM PARTs that have 1-4 operators that I want added along with 1-4 operators of other FM PARTs. Recently I took 4 FM-X PARTs and thankfully what I needed from each was a simple 1 carrier + 1 modulator stack. I took the 4 PARTs, added them to a new Performance. I used Algorithm 67 and thankfully only one of those carrier/modulator stacks had the feedback loop. Using Shift + Edit, I quickly Exchange the 8 Operators into the new Algorithm 67 PART. It worked perfectly
I also use Shift + Live Set to add Performances + MIDI Sequenced Songs to Live Set. This is simply awesome!

And there's no UNDO!???

There's a great idea. Add that one to Ideascale and I'll be the first to Up Vote it for you!
You get enough votes and traction on that one, and with people from the Voicing team being on this forum, they may just push something like that high up on the list for future features...

ANDREW: I'm not sure your workarounds to things you've presumed, on the basis of that which you're not sure of, aren't just solutions to straw men of your own making for reasons that I'm not sure about.

Am I incorrect in assuming that your goal (in being able to switch elements in and out via scenes) would be to better facilitate combining X sounds within Y amount of polyphony? That was the impression I got from the paragraphs of yours that I quoted, which both dealt with polypyhony. If I misunderstood, and you weren't postulating a way to provide more efficient use of polyphony, please clarify what it is you're trying to accomplish, what problem switching elements via scenes would solve for you (which should have been so obvious to a product manager!).

If I'm right, though, and I did accurately summarize what you were asking for in that post, then my suggestion of a "better (simpler and more flexible) way to accomplish" that goal isn't a "workaround," it is the basic way the board already works. If you want to switch among sounds, you typically do it with scenes (and their updated KBD CRTL functionality), or by switching Performances via a Live Set page. Or you can do it with other control mechanisms, e.g. the AF buttons. Adding the ability to also do it by switching elements within scenes does not give you any more polyphony than existing approaches. Elements that are triggered use polyphony, elements that are not, don't. That doesn't change based on whether the elements are in a single Part or are scattered among multiple Parts.

Darryl's goal seems to be something else entirely... getting more than 8 different "switchable" sounds out of the 8 keyboard-controllable parts within a single Performance. And while this can be useful, there are limitations, too. You said, "given that Elements can be ANY sound ..." -- well, in a way, They can have any wave, for example. But if you're going to use an 8-Element Part for the purpose of providing multiple completely independent sounds, you are going to get bitten by limitations (like only one insert effect pair being available for that entire set of sounds, and the existence of other manipulations that are independently available at the Part level but not the Element level). And of course, you'll be dealing with some simpler sounds. A one or two element piano is not going to give you the sonic equivalent of an eight element piano.

Darryl, did you look into the possibility of switching in your ninth sound with an AF button? I think that might have let you do what you're asking. Though of course, there are only two AF buttons, compared to 8 Scene buttons. But it could conceivably give you the instant access you want to a ninth and tenth keyboard playable sound, if those sounds exist as Elements within the first 8 Parts. At least if I'm understanding all this correctly.

I've made request(s) for more access to elements in scenes including selecting element on/off states that would work similar to the assignable switches (and keyboard control).

For me this isn't so much about polyphony. It's about the limited resource of 8 Parts.

Certainly I am aware of the "ball and chain" of parameters that connect from the Part common level to elements - what you lose by moving an element from its own Part into some Part to "share" space with other elements. Insertion effects is one thing - but there's plenty of other items. Still, I have situations where (my) programming choices would be facilitated by stuffing elements into Parts shared with other elements and have a way to switch these stuffed elements in/out so I end up with more than 8 Parts under keyboard control.

Doubling the amount of Parts available to keyboard control (another request) would be an "easier" way to get to the same place for me. Programming would be simplified. I don't know if there are other constraints that make this request fall flat.

And - although one can use level to "mute" elements - this is where the polyphony problem comes in because volume/level reduced elements pile onto the polyphony count unnecessarily if the goal is to have random access to switching some elements on/off.

The assignable switches don't work because for XA control and using the local control surface we have two buttons that peanut-butter spread across all Parts and not sufficient states of these buttons to accomplish the task in most cases.

Right now I'm dealing with the Part limit(s) by throwing options overboard. I'm not too bent out of shape over this - it's the name of the game. Juggle the resources you have to achieve the best outcome. Limitations provide as much "fun" as capabilities in the synth programming world.

AnotherScott: Darryl, did you look into the possibility of switching in your ninth sound with an AF button? I think that might have let you do what you're asking. Though of course, there are only two AF buttons, compared to 8 Scene buttons. But it could conceivably give you the instant access you want to a ninth and tenth keyboard playable sound, if those sounds exist as Elements within the first 8 Parts. At least if I'm understanding all this correctly.

That is a great way to add a 9th & 10th sound. Unfortunately in this instance for PARTs 1-8 I used half FM-X PARTs and I already had the Assign buttons utilized on 2 of the AWM2 PARTs (Guitar Muting & Harmonics). The other 2 AWM2's had Insert Effects that wouldn't have worked for the additional PART Elements I was going to use.

JASON: For me this isn't so much about polyphony. It's about the limited resource of 8 Parts

Right, this is where Darryl seems to be coming from as well.

Doubling the amount of Parts available to keyboard control (another request) would be an "easier" way to get to the same place for me.

Yes, and there is that MIDI loopback workaround to accomplish that goal. Yes, there are compromises involved in ganging up two sounds (one "normal" internal and one addressed as if it were external) on the same Part, but these are analagous to (and generally probably LESS limiting than) the compromises involved in ganging up multiple sounds at the element level, wouldn't you say?

Programming would be simplified. I don't know if there are other constraints that make this request fall flat.

I gave my thoughts on that in post #15 at https://www.yamahasynth.com/forum/kbd-ctrl-to-16-parts-on-the-montage

although one can use level to "mute" elements - this is where the polyphony problem comes in because volume/level reduced elements pile onto the polyphony count unnecessarily if the goal is to have random access to switching some elements on/off.

Right. I wasn't suggesting that switching sounds via saving element states in scenes wouldn't save polyphony compared to using the volume sliders to bring elements in and out (same situation as using sliders to bring Parts in and out... they use polyphony even at zero, in order for you to be able to fade them in after the keys have been struck). Rather, I was saying that using that method to switch sounds does not save polyphony compared to other methods of switching sounds, e.g. using scenes to bring in different Parts within a Performance, or using Live Sets to switch to alternate Performances. And these existing approaches are simpler, and don't force onto you all the restrictions that you'll run into when ganging up multiple sounds into a single Part at the element level (effects and, as you said, plenty of other items), while still not using any more polyphony. So the appeal of this theoretical feature is for a different kind of access to more than 8 Parts, not a way to use polyphony more efficiently. Though yes, IF you're going to gang up multiple sounds at the element level to address your need for more than 8 distinct sounds, THEN switching between those element-based "sub-parts" via scenes would save polyphony over switching between those sub-parts with the sliders. Maybe that's what Andrew was getting at? But boy, are we getting into the weeds here. I'm not saying it's useless but it's hardly anything one would batter product managers over not providing, or some kind of "I can't believe they didn't implement this!" feature.

The assignable switches don't work because for XA control and using the local control surface we have two buttons that peanut-butter spread across all Parts and not sufficient states of these buttons to accomplish the task in most cases.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, Are you saying you can't enable/disable the AF functionality on a part-by-part basis? Because it seems to me you could make a copy of a Part in which the AF button simply doesn't do anything, if need be. So you should be able to split/layer your 8 keyboard-controllable Parts, and if one of those Parts has a 9th sound within its elements you'd like to be able to switch to (or away from) using a button (as you would with the theoretical Scene button implementation if I'm understanding the suggestion correctly), the AF button should be able to alter which Elements are active in just the one Part, to get you your ninth sound when desired, no? The fact that the button's status is spread across all Parts doesn't matter if the button isn't programmed to do anything in any of the other seven Parts. (I have not done any AF programming myself, so I could be misunderstanding the capablities here. But just using the buttons in some of the stock sounds, I can see they can be used to trigger alternate Elements within a Part, unless I misunderstand how it's doing what I'm hearing.)

AnotherScott: Darryl, did you look into the possibility of switching in your ninth sound with an AF button? I think that might have let you do what you're asking. Though of course, there are only two AF buttons, compared to 8 Scene buttons. But it could conceivably give you the instant access you want to a ninth and tenth keyboard playable sound, if those sounds exist as Elements within the first 8 Parts. At least if I'm understanding all this correctly.

That is a great way to add a 9th & 10th sound. Unfortunately in this instance for PARTs 1-8 I used half FM-X PARTs and I already had the Assign buttons utilized on 2 of the AWM2 PARTs (Guitar Muting & Harmonics). The other 2 AWM2's had Insert Effects that wouldn't have worked for the additional PART Elements I was going to use.

Ah! You can't have everything. 😉 Even if element assignments were available in Scenes, someone would say, "oh, I can't use that, because I've used up all 8 of my scene buttons for something else." 🙂

In the end, Montage was always "meant" for 8 keyboard-playable Parts, the architecture is designed on that foundation. There are ways to add to that, whether through MIDI loopback or multiple sounds within a Part at the Element level, but going beyond 8 sounds in 8 parts will always involve trade-offs, whether its loss of some independant controls, loss of independent effects, loss of seamless transistions, whatever. It's cool that there are ways to get it to do other things, but its optimum usage is always going to be acheived within its 8-Part paradigm. Of course, it never hurts to ask for something more. 😉

That is a great way to add a 9th & 10th sound. Unfortunately in this instance for PARTs 1-8 I used half FM-X PARTs and I already had the Assign buttons utilized on 2 of the AWM2 PARTs (Guitar Muting & Harmonics). The other 2 AWM2's had Insert Effects that wouldn't have worked for the additional PART Elements I was going to use.

Ah! You can't have everything. 😉 Even if element assignments were available in Scenes, someone would say, "oh, I can't use that, because I've used up all 8 of my scene buttons for something else." 🙂

Ok, I would have said I can't use that in the previous Performance/Song, but there are definitely some that I could have & I may redo using Assign 1/2 (for now) kind of as additional Scene 9 & 10 buttons 😉
But thinking about it, 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 is a lot of possibilities to choose from if Elements On/Off Switching was added to Scenes ... it's more than the 256 possibilities we have now with KBD CTRL of PARTS. Even if they added Elements On/Off Switching for PART 8 only, that would give us an additional 256 possible combinations to choose from for that PART, which in many cases would eliminate the desire for having all 16 PARTs under KBD CTRL, as Elements in PART 8 could then be utilized as individually controlled sounds/Elements. If they did implement it for all Elements in PARTs 1-8 all unused Elements in those PARTs could then be utilized!!

The fact of having more waves (probably everyone will understand regardless of make being played) is limited in the final usability, at least for the porpouse I pretended, by that annoying 0-1023 range used for delays (don't know Montage's) in Fantom.
Say you want to play a phrase by setting partials/elemens at intervals 0, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000....End. Six partials. Six elements. And the step used is even too narrow, but I pretended being generous...
One could circumnavigate it by setting extremely low tempos, I have already touched 33, but natural (tempo not false or fake) arpeggios get compromised and need lots of adjustments to plug into the rythm adequately by altering the type, variation, accent...
As for orchestration, no worries in modeless Fantom as you can go from scene to scene ad eternum.