Yeah, I wish the Tyros sounds were available for the Montage...

My friend does own both the Tyros 5 and the Montage. He also commented on needing a good pedal steel on the Montage as well as a good harmonica. There's no reason to drag the T5 around with the Montage just for those (2) voices.

Pedal Steel?

Pitch bend...

Just found these previous articles....should have done a better search.:o

"It would be great if a feature of an ARP would be to assign pitch bend ranges to the note numbers."

Perhaps in a future update?

As mentioned before, the core sound of the pedal steel (at least to me) has not been very convincing. This is ignoring bends and controls. Just a single note sustained - doesn't sound like pedal steel guitars I hear "out in the wild" doing the same thing. Playing a "run" without bends - doesn't sound close to the concept I have from recordings. Even some more difficult to "pull off" instruments sound closer to their "real instruments" than pedal steel does.

Tried the Assignable Switches 1 & 2 - which do not get the sound any closer for me.

I think to get the core sound more suitable will take a 3rd party set.

That said - you can make a tin can sound like a steel guitar if you real-time adjust enough parameters. I'm not sure which "voice" was used in this - but a demo of the Yamaha ES doing steel guitar (note: the roland is just a controller)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCItRASlEcY

My guess is that the left-hand of the keyboard does not react to one of his two foot pedals (which is for foot pitch bend) which is something that can be programmed.

Even the core sound of the video doesn't sound like pedal steel which is more exposed when no bending or overdrive effects are happening.

BTW: the Pedal Steel of Montage uses superknob to add overdrive. I do not think there is a harmonics (overtones) option - but this doesn't interest me as none of the pedal steel work I do would require this. You could probably map a velocity to the guitar harmonics which would do the trick.

Also, the Montage Pedal Steel assignable switch 2 (button) does some prebend articulation. Not sure I can do anything with that - doesn't seem to fit in with anything I need to do on pedal steel.

If anyone is aware of a better 3rd party set for Motif or Montage - it would be interesting to have it listed as a reference. Perhaps even a public domain set of samples that have a better "naked" sound would work better assuming someone put together a user waveform for it. I've even seen FM as a suggestion to make a pedal steel - hard to think that would "best" a sample - but I'm open.

Well put Jason. I, too, tried the various knob and switches provided in the performance and was left scratching my head as to what the programmer was trying to accomplish here. It certainly sounds nothing like a pedal steel.

I was left with the impression they just threw something together, gave up and moved on.

Perhaps, as you mentioned, a third party (such as Easysounds) will take an interest.

I just found a possible solution in a third-party offering. Turns out that Easysounds DOES have an offering called AXXE for Motif that includes county guitars and a pedal steel.

AXXE

I listened to the audio demo on their site and it's not bad. Check it out and let me know what you think.You can also hear it briefly at 5:21 in their YouTube video below:

Video review

I know these sounds can be imported into the Montage but since they don't contain any new samples, I'm not sure how they will sound using the built-in samples.

Stuart.

AXXE wasn't made by EasySounds as far as I recall

You're correct. They are made by Dcp productions and sold by EasySounds.

The 2-3 seconds of demo for the pedal steel (Axxe) doesn't sound any better to me than using one of the many guitars currently available in Montage or perhaps the pedal steel as-is.

I think you can coax out something acceptable from the built-in Pedal Steel (Montage) if what you are doing has enough bends. It's the more naked sound for sustained notes that I have the most difference with.

Possibly adjusting the effects will also do the trick - I just haven't had the time to go and program this one to try to adjust it (or edit a guitar as I've done in the past with Yamaha boards since the guitar came closer than pedal steel to the pedal steel sound).

My call for country, as a keyboardist, is lower than the other genres - which does influence my priority on this one.

I just loaded the AXXE sound set for the Motif XF on the Montage and, pedal steel aside, it's fabulous. Quite a collection of famous guitar sounds/riffs along with a great manual explaining each in detail along with pictures of the guitars, amps and effects boxes used.

IMHO the included pedal steel is better than the preset one, and has the ribbon controller enabled.

The Axxe set gets praises for the guitars for sure - certainly the strummed chords sampled in maj/min (and any other qualities) are more convincing then assembled guitars using individual notes, pick noises, and ARPs. And up/down stroke using two different keyboard keys makes for an easy way to perform the guitar parts. An ARP for a strumming pattern works here too producing a better result than the stock method.

As far as ribbon - that's a user performance away from being enabled / adjusted using Montage's pedal steel.

The Axxe set is an alternative for the preset pedal steel - so it's good to know.

I'm not sure if there's a country/rockabilly/bluegrass collection out there which focuses on these instruments. Better (or just different) "fiddle" performances, pedal steel (as covered here), some different "chicken pickin'" type guitars and some of the more modern country guitar sounds -- although guitar is pretty good in general in Montage's presets, different mandolin / resonator guitars / banjo / harmonica / bass (upright and acoustic guitar bass). For bass - something that does the upright bluegrass slap technique when you "dig in" would be nice. Upright Bass AF1 is the closest to it. Hard plucked bass and would be great if the release would allow for single/double slap after the fundamental. Lots of potential in the bass articulations and controls for rockabilly.

Yeah, I knew the ribbon controller could easily be enabled but just mentioned it to illustrate the differences in stock setups.
I'd also be interested in any country/rockabilly/bluegrass collections available for Motif or Montage.

I am developing a FREE iPad/iPhone app that converts any MIDI keyboard/synth into a Pedal Steel Keytar that emulates the FULL functionality of a pedal steel guitar with realistic (still working on improving that part, feedback welcome) sounds, including electric, jazz, acoustic, classical, and dobro guitars, and with all the familiarity and ease of playing barre chords on a 6-string guitar.

The following maneuvers are possible:
bend
slide
slide+bend
picked slide
ornamental slide
harmonics
harmonic slide

Here is a video demoing the app. Notice that the left hand is not playing piano chords. It is ‘fretting’ guitar barre chords. Also notice that the right hand is not playing piano notes. It is ‘plucking’ fretted guitar strings.

https://youtu.be/JCCK1Zm_0DE

For the app to work right out of the box, your instrument will need to be General MIDI 1 compatible, and will preferrably support the MIDI ‘All Notes Off’ and ‘Local Off’ messages, but the app will work with all MIDI keyboards/synths, regardless.