I've been pretty excited about the Yamaha Montage for a while, and I still am. The technology seems amaizing and my love for FM synthesis made this product a winner of a spot in my personal 'wanted' list.

Over time I've been thinking, reading manuals, looking for demos which I don't seem to get enough of. I've read all the articles about Montage and FM in the Yamaha Production guides. And suddenly I'm not so sure anymore. It has nothing to do with FM-X or the technology on the synth, but more on workflow.

Bad Mister have many times posted about workflow and that you have to adapt to the instrument, and I agree. Some thoughts about it.

I will describe a bit about me and my workflow.
First of all, I'm no great keyboard player, so I don't really play one track at a time. I record a few bars in midi, and do some corrections, or new takes. Then I improvise to a track and add something here and there as things comes to mind. The worst thing to happen to me, is when I have a great idea, and can't can't find a sound to go with it. When I have to search for sounds in massive libraries, I usually can't find one that doesn't need editing. And when I start spending more and more time on the editing, my inspiration and ideas are more or less gone. To me it's the inspiration of sounds that later becomes music.
The best thing for for me, would be to have an instrument that I can quickly edit on the fly. I basically spend most of my time making sounds for fun. So I know a lot about synthesis and sound-creation. It just needs it to be quicker to program. Like an analog synth, or any synth that has that kind of interface. Like the Minimoog, or Nord Lead. This would help me a lot. But I'm not sure Montage is it.

Yamaha montage still excites me but I'm not sure it's right for me. I do agree that most players need to do some adjustment to their workflow, but to some it might not be the right tool for the job. Using Montage, Motif or Kronos for that matter, would require me to adapt to the instrument and «learn it's ways».

I don't think I'm alone about my workflow and my view of the Yamaha Montage. Though I do feel that Yamaha's over all philosophy is to make an instrument that would have something for everyone, rather than making many single-purpose products.

Yamaha did recently release the Reface Series of portable keyboards. These seem to be the opposite of Montage. They are roughly single purpose products, that gives you the ability to create sounds on the fly and by that helping you to keep up with your creativity. But something's missing. I do have a reface DX (hence my love for FM) and it's fantastic, but it's a complimentary instrument. It won't have the «center of the studio» role, atleast not in my studio. I need something else that would be the main controller in the studio. And if it's not Montage, there should be an instrument placed somewhere in between the two. The sweetspot-instrument for me is located between reface DX and Montage.

If I belong to a larger group of musicians which are cought between reface and Montage. I hope Yamaha will cover the gap with an instrument like.. maybe this:

Medium FM Synthesizer:
Synthesis: FM
Operators pr voice: 8
Algorithms: 88
Polyphony: 32+ (8 when using 4 slots).
Multitimbrality: 4+ (Select buttons to select between the 4 slots), simple split/layer configuration.
Memory: Performance mode only. 400+ slots.
Octaves: 5
Effects: 3x effect processors for each part. Including All VCM models.
Control: Mod wheel, Pitch wheel, pedals, aftertouch, velocity, superknob, step sequencer/arpeggiator.

Modulation:
Add modulation by pressing one of several mod-source-buttons, and turn any knob which represents the destination. Simple and quick. Step sequencer also being a modulation source (motion sequencer lite?).

Hardware interface:
Graphical LCD: Showing info when editing. Bread & Butter menus.

Algorithm section: Knob for selection, knob for Feedback level.

Operator section: Covers all buttons and knobs for a single operator.+ 8 buttons to select between which operator to edit.

Effects section: 3 effects slot buttons, Depth knob, Rate knob and Type knob.

Overall this would be spot on for me. And it would be the only FM synth ever to have an interface like an analog synth. Many keep saying that FM has too many parameters to fit on a hardware interface. I think it's possible when you only have controls for a single operator at a time, and use buttons to select which operator to edit. It's also possible to narrow things down further with a shift button. Let's say you have a Coarse/Fine knob, when shift is pressed, you do fine-tuning. Or for the envelope, with 4 knobs, you can access Level, or rates by pressing shift. But the overall philosophy should be that you never have to press a button more then once to access a parameter with a knob. I hope Yamaha feel me. DX7 mkIII anyone? 🙂