As far as I understood- Yamaha / BM correct me if I am wrong- there is currently not even the possibility to create a user arp OUTSIDE of the keyboard. You would have to buy a Motif or MOXF for that, the Melas software can't do arps as far as I know.

I find that a strange design decision. Hope it will be corrected. Shouldn't arp editing be somehow part of the motion sequencer?

Not about negativity, I think overall the Montage concept is quite cool and interesting, despite some limitations (1.75 GB user flash is really not much in 2016! But anyway...)

That's a real bummer if it is true that you can't edit arpeggios on a Montage. 1.75 GB user flash is not bad though IMHO.

well, atleast there are 128 free memmorie locations for user arps..

But, i allways tought that the high end synths where supposed to be a source of inspiration, innovation and creativity... so in my book there is something missing, i hope Yamaha realises this soon and adds utilities to create user arps, and save more of them then 256...

Falk wrote:

As far as I understood- Yamaha / BM correct me if I am wrong- there is currently not even the possibility to create a user arp OUTSIDE of the keyboard. You would have to buy a Motif or MOXF for that, the Melas software can't do arps as far as I know.

I find that a strange design decision. Hope it will be corrected. Shouldn't arp editing be somehow part of the motion sequencer?

Not about negativity, I think overall the Montage concept is quite cool and interesting, despite some limitations (1.75 GB user flash is really not much in 2016! But anyway...)

Shouldn't Arp editing be somehow part of the Motion Sequencer? Actually No, not at all. They are two very separate things.

What possibilities become available in the future is "future stuff" and that's best left for official announcements. Official announcements exist for a reason, and those reasons are not always appreciated, (although they should be).

It was fairly obvious in the past 15 years that arp creation was not as big a feature as those in this thread are making it. Probably why they didn't burden the internal system with that task. You must be the only ones who filled all 256 user locations. Well, if you are one of those people who have, then you know it only takes 2 seconds to load a new batch. And if you're going to tell me you need more than 256 loaded in at a time, then I'm going to suggest you make your music sets a little shorter and less busy 🙂

I know I shouldn't be kidding, you are all so serious about this point... But c'mon "why so serious"? (Forgive my attempts at humor.)

All of the utilities and supporting items for Montage have not been announced quite yet, so perhaps you don't see the "complete picture" quite yet. I'm just saying: Just allow for that possibility. And if arpeggios is a deal breaker for you at this time, then I suggest you wait until it is solved to your "best-guess" on how you think you'll need to work with this thing you have not even seen yet. You should buy the Montage because you like its sound, and its capability to make your music and to match your lifestyle. If the changes from Motif XF are not what you can bear - that's easy, stay with the Motif XF - it will continue to have the feature set that fits your lifestyle. Leave Montage for those who find it compelling. And if and when the features you require appear, join those who, no doubt, will already be enjoying Montage. Best I can give you at this point.

BM you're probably right that creating user arps is something you don't do every day. With my MOXF I created only a few in the last 2 years or so. So for me 256 would be good. But it just doesn't "feel" right to have the limitation of 256 non-editable "user" arps in a pro instrument.

Speaking about humour, I have a question for you: some time ago, in another forum, a person (who is not over there anymore) was elaborating on the difference between the "Tyros" and the "Motif" buyer, and said something like "even if you have 8000+ preset arps, the Motif buyer will start asking for doing his own custom arps". You know who that person was? 🙂 🙂

So you knew what would happen, obviously developers in Japan didn't, please advise them 🙂

Apart from that, your conclusion to wait for some time and see how things develop sounds reasonable.

oh shush, will you, phil. don't insult our intelligence by spreading silly marketing lingo. please be honest. in the past motif customers had zero reasons to create user arps because they rightly preferred to use the onboard pattern sequencer for that kind of ableton-like clip production purpose. now with the montage BOTH pattern creation AND user arp tweaking are gone! what were you thinking, for god´s sake? yamaha wants 3,000 euros for that workflow mess pita? laughable. for comparison: in order to use the cheap roland jd-xi which comes with no sd card slot, one ALWAYS has to run a laptop in conjunction with it, otherwise every jd-xi pattern would be lost after switching off power. with the montage--a high-end product--it basically will be the same. it´s crazy. without external processing and reworking the board is useless. in case you missed it, phil: there is one kylie minogue album that was entirely produced and recorded on a triton studio. i know a guy in the business who still record whole songs on his fantom g. yamaha seems to have little or no understanding of their target audience. you said you created and designed online surveys and polls. for your information: survey participants are often purely driven by the desire to make engineers change specs. they want future products to be DIFFERENT. my guess is that motif users who liked the onboard sequencer did not take part in your survey because they were happy customers. let´s face it: you achieved nothing with your surveys. when montage was announced i was thrilled. i wanted to purchase one immediately. but without basic funcitionality (copying chorus measures within a track, for example) this thing has nothing to offer, workflow-wise. sad. epic fail.

Bad Mister wrote:
You should buy the Montage because you like its sound, and its capability to make your music and to match your lifestyle. If the changes from Motif XF are not what you can bear - that's easy, stay with the Motif XF

Agree 100% BM. Often, it is not the range of features that make great music. It is the LACK of features that forces musicians to apply their ingenuity and work within the limitations.
Did Beethoven complain about the limitations of the 6 octave Broadwood piano he used... a piano quite crappy by today's standards, and absolutely not up to the features level of even a 1970's synthesizer? No, he didn't complain, he knuckled down & made great music with what he had, & did NOT blame his instruments (even though he knew that they could be improved in the future).
Likewise, we should not blame our instruments for our own inadequacies. Some of us are professionals... OK, we have access to many fine keyboards & other paraphernalia to cover a universe of possibilities. Most of us are amateurs and only in it for personal pleasure & that of a few friends. In both cases we must not blame our lack of imagination on Yamaha.
From everything I've seen & heard so far I will be buying a Montage 7 the day it comes out and won't look back hankering for something else. I'll happily use the Montage 7 to the day I die and never ask if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. 🙂

we must not blame our lack of imagination on Yamaha.

oh boy, some company troll already going into damage control mode, posting dumb shit that offends us, the loyal customers. “our lack of imagination”? “OUR”?? 😀 man, stop distracting attention from the fact that it is the yamaha corporation that lacks imagination when it comes to workflow regarding the montage! being able to tweak arps would have been at least some kind of workaround to sequence. remember: as parent company of steinberg yamaha wants us to purchase a full-blown cubase version later also. that is probably the reason why they left out a sequencer worthy of the name in montage. a $3,000 motif successor that can´t be used standalone is a bad joke. the montage is basically a jupiter 80 which sounds great, too, but was heavily and rightfully criticized by countless commentators at gearslutz and roland clan for – amongst other things – not including an on-board sequencer. yamaha apparently didn´t learn from roland´s mistakes. fact is they screwed up big time and should be ashamed of themselves imho.

"some company troll already going into damage control mode"

And what is your mode called? Is this your Performance mode?

"but was heavily and rightfully criticized by countless commentators"

Listetning to complaints only is not even close to a proper market research

"fact is they screwed up big time"

No, that's an opinion. You can have your own opinion, but you can't have your own facts.

oh dear, another submissive fanboy /facepalm
how was dinner at the sheltered housing group?

lars wrote:

oh dear, another submissive fanboy /facepalm
how was dinner at the sheltered housing group?

I know it takes all kinds, but your adhom angst is becoming tiresome.
If you aren't here to teach or to learn, or generally be good company, you'd do better to go & design a better synth than the Montage. Slagging off Yamaha (or Roland, Casio, Korg, Nord, or any other company) and calling forum members "troll" & "submissive fanboy" wastes the time that your great intellect could use re-programming the Montage arpeggiator function in machine code to do what you're demanding Yamaha should have done.

So, you can not write your own ARP?? That is pure nonsense. It is disappointing. I hope still it will be corrected but, sadly,
We know all that engineers and designers are not free, the hierarchies up to them is more focus on economics than on ergonomics, that is our world. Shareholders have more power than consumers, except boycott.

natalini wrote:

So, you can not write your own ARP?? That is pure nonsense. It is disappointing. I hope still it will be corrected but, sadly,
We know all that engineers and designers are not free, the hierarchies up to them is more focus on economics than on ergonomics, that is our world. Shareholders have more power than consumers, except boycott.

Have you ever used a MONTAGE that you're calling it pure nonsense? Let's no judge something which is not out yet. If Cubase's Arpeggiation system is superior to MOTIF XF's I would rather use Cubase! I bet you can't create them faster and better in any MOTIF compared to Cubase and there wont be any limits on how many ARPs you want in Cubase...

So, you need a computer plus cubase with a 4000 euro synth, for just be able to make your own ARP ! No comment!