For some songs, I like to play a piano sound with the keyboard split in half and the right half of the keyboard lowered by an octave. On the Motif XF, I accomplished this using a Voice Master with Zones enabled. Yesterday I tried to set up the same situation on my Montage. I was eventually able to figure out a way to do it, but I'm wondering if what I did was the best way.
I started with the Bosendorfer Imperial Grand Piano Performance. It consists of three Parts. I copied Parts 1, 2, 3 to Parts 4, 5, 6. I set the keyboard range of Parts 1, 2, 3 to top out at the middle of the keyboard, and the keyboard range of Parts 4, 5, 6 to bottom out just above that split point. Then I lowered Parts 4, 5, 6 by an octave.
It works fine, it's usable, and the Super Knob does the same thing with all 6 Parts that it does in the original Bosendorfer Performance. The only thing that bothers me about this is that I wonder if there's a better, simpler way to do this. Is there?
No one ever responded. 🙁
Still wondering. Specifically, can Zones be used to do this?
Sorry we missed your question the first time 'round.
The way you are doing it is efficient and best use of the architecture. The Zone Master function, of course, can be used to address internal Parts as well as its main function, controlling external devices, but I don't see a reason (benefit) to involve the Zone function in this particular case. But that said, since I have not had reason to explore this for any reason, I will not say there isn't some benefit. Certainly, if you are also involving an external device via MIDI, there would be a benefit to involving the Zone function.
I believe your solution, from almost a year ago, was on target.
I would use "note shift" (set to -12) under PART/common settings (pressing [EDIT] on a selected PART, making sure lower-left "Common" box is selected and not an element, then selecting "Part Settings" -> "Pitch" menu tab with touchscreen) - if I wanted a PART to play an octave below.
Limiting the keyboard range for each half of the split is the other step you've covered.
Current Yamaha Synthesizers: Montage Classic 7, Motif XF6, S90XS, MO6, EX5R
Thanks, Bad Mister. It's always good to hear from an expert that I'm doing things the right way.
I got to thinking about whether there was a way to do this without using up six Part slots in the Performance. Turns out it wasn't that difficult to create a Cubase project with a MIDI track, and set up the MIDI Input Transformer on that track to split the keyboard.
The MIDI track only splits Note events coming in on MIDI Channels 1-3. So you can add any other Part starting with position 4, and those parts won't be split.
I'm not sure how useful this might be to anyone else, but I'll upload it here just in case.