Yes, that is possible.

Thank you very much!

You can just load your backing tracks in as .mid file. If you know what sound or sounds you wish to play along with, set your .mid data (prepared in your favorite DAW, I use Cubase) to use the other Parts. You can construct User Performances with any and all the sounds you would like to use, and switch between them as necessary.

I put together a setup to demonstrate several lead instruments in Parts 1-7, the "backing band" is set to play via the associated .mid file using the rest of the Parts. This works quite well. I store the entire setup in a Montage User Performance. Play the .mid file use the front panel Part Select buttons to switch between my featured programs.

You can create audio (.wav) and either stream it, or as you are conjecturing map it to a Key, manually activating/deactivating and work that way. (This is working, perhaps, unnecessarily hard) sounds like you've been told that there is no straight forward way to do this... Not sure that this is, in fact a true statement. Yes, it is different from Motif/MOXF, Montage is not a "workstation". The MIDI recorder is a "Direct Performance Recorder", which means it is expressly designed to record your performing on Montage. Because you are, or can be, interacting with multiple Parts simultaneously, it is designed to document everything you do, including morphing between active Parts. (We know this will take a minute for some folks to get their heads around, but it will become clearer as instructional videos start to appear).

A lot of what you create with Montage may best be recorded as audio. With 32 audio outputs via USB you can quickly and easily construct your "backing tracks" to your favorite DAW - how you decide to bring them along with you to the gig is a matter of preference.

Some will be comfortable with MIDI (MIDI gives you a certain amount of "change your mind", meaning, you can still mix the levels of your "backing tracks" while they play, even change the tempo), others will be comfortable with having their "backing tracks" streaming as a stereo file direct from a USB drive, or as you have pointed out, mapped to keys, using Alternate Groups, to turn Waveforms On/Off on-the-fly.

I think that playing along to "backing tracks" can be very straightforward.
Hope that helps.

It certainly does help, thank you. A few things are becoming clearer to me now. I would definitely make great use of .mid file playback, because of the flexibility that you mentioned (being able to change the levels and tempo of the tracks)...but I would also need to play .wav files (mostly parts that were cut out of the original song)

You can create audio (.wav) and either stream it

Could you please elaborate a bit on this part? I'm just curious about how exactly streaming works - do I always need to select the wav file that I want to stream by entering the utility (or some other) menu, or can the wav files maybe be linked to specific performances?
Here's a specific example - do you maybe know how Bert Smorenburg did his setup for the backing tracks in this demonstration?

https://youtu.be/WLZic7sXIBo?t=18m27s

At this time mark, I can see that he starts a vocal backing track by pressing the 'play' button, and I'd just like to know if he needed to access a dedicated menu where he selected that wav file, or if that wav file was somehow linked to the performance containing the strings sound part (which would be very convenient 🙂 )

You should reach out to Bert, he can tell exactly how he did this.

_ It could be a live stereo audio input (remember Montage can derive tempo from external audio)... The A/D Input has its Part, with its own dedicated Dual Insert Effects. (This is a huge feature that will surely change things for "live" performers...arps, motion sequences, LFOs, Tempo Delays can all be clocked by an external audio source.

_ It could simply be a Waveform with the vocals being triggered by a MIDI note-on event. Like the Motif-series, custom Waveforms can stream from the Flash Memory... 128 stereo samples can be housed in a single Waveform...

So for example, I have a song where on C3 is the lead vocal on C#3 are the backing vocals, on D3 is my guitar player's electric guitar solo. The audio is installed on Flash, and are triggered like any other sound.

With Montage, the audio tracks were recorded into Cubase exported as .wav, installed to Flash, I then made a Performance Part that had the vocal, background vocal and guitar solo - I could have used separate tracks but since I thoroughly prepared the data, I was able to use just a single Part for all three. (And I still have 125 other keys on which to place other audio parts in this one Waveform!)

Great! Thank you again, that's all I needed to hear 🙂

I tried doing this with a. 37 second wave triggered as a drum key on c2 but when I play along with it. And hold sustain pedal my wave cuts off any idea what I could be doing wrong

@Zabdi - look at your amplitude envelope (AEG). I would suspect the decay1 and decay2 levels are causing the problem. Bump them up to the same (audible) level - possibly the same as attack. Also take a look at the filter envelope (FEG) and do the same as filter can have an affect on amplitude as well.

Also, to avoid having to hold the sustain pedal you could always assign your waveform without loop points ("one shot") and set your release to the same level as decay1/decay2. This controls what happens when you let go of the key - and you can set it to "do nothing" when you let go - so the waveform will continue to sound until it reaches the end of the sample.

Not sure what you're trying to do - this may not be desirable - but an option for those samples you want to play all the way through and not have to hold the key or press sustain.

Thank you Jason for your response. I checked the setting that you suggested now to better explain myself what I am trying to do is I have setup a performance that it is called king of king and that song has an intro guitar and pads and I set that up in C#2 and the guitar solo is D#2 each audio clip is maybe 20 to 50 second. Now o play a piano sound so when I want to start the song I hit C#2 and play the piano if I hit the sustain pedal to hold the piano note and hold it down as I switch chord. The wave. Sound that I triggered shuts off. But if i play without the sustain pedal. Everything is good any idea why that would be

Not sure what's going on with the sustain, but go ahead and turn off the part you have the samples mapped to response to sustain.

1) Edit the part w/samples
2) Touchscreen (TS): "Common" (lower left blue box), "Mod / Control" -> "Receive SW"
3) TS: "Sustain" turn to "OFF"

At least for that part when you press the sustain, nothing should happen since it should be ignored. Unless ...

But what you are describing sounds more like you are running out of resources than anything else.

Make sure your C#2 and D#2 part is note limited so the range only covers the couple of keys you have mapped to sounds. This probably won't help anything, but it would help to isolate this part down to only the notes you actually use.

It would be strange from what you are describing to use 100% of the polyphony - but when I hear "using sustain" combined with "notes cutting off" my mind goes to polyphony (or other limit in shared resources).