The motifator.com site is run by Keyfax, not Yamaha. Last night, they appeared to suffer some sort of database error. In the early hours of the outtage, the webserver was reporting no connection to the database. Now the webserver is down, too.

Keyfax doesn't seem to have a working backup strategy, otherwise they wouldn't have lost all the precious data in the Motif XS forum built over many years by so many amazing people.

Someone at Yamaha should use something like wget to scrape motifator.com so that all of that incredibly valuable information can be preserved in case something even more catastrophic happens over there.

Thanks for the explanation. And I'm glad to see that my somewhat emotional initial post was unwarranted.
Motifator.com appears to be up again. It was just an ironic coincidence that it was down just when I received the
announcement from Yamaha about YamahaSynth. Having said that, I agree it would be great if there were a way for
much of the excellent educational content on Motifator to be accessible here for the reasons you cite.

Hi Stephen

Thanks for your question and thanks for visiting yamahasynth.com.

Our goal for this site is to help folks get the most out of any Yamaha Synth: current, vintage or legacy.

If you check out the Resources section, you'll see over a hundred in-depth articles on how to use your Yamaha Synth with the intention to continuously add more.

The Blog section will be more focused on things that aren't strict reference material like how artists use Yamaha Synths, video demonstrations and maybe an interesting article from Yamaha's product development team.

Regarding other online communities, those are independent entities and we're not privy to their endeavors; our resources are entirely focused on ys.com.

Thanks again for your comment and visiting ys.com. We hope to make it the resource you seek. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments on how we can make it a better experience for you.

Welcome!

I'm still a bit confused...is Yamaha support no longer actively participating at Motifator.com?

Brian, that is a good question. I see Bad_Mister is no longer on the site of motifator.com and has moved here, so I am not sure who the resident expert is. It might be "Mr. Motifator", don't really know. Dave Polich is still commenting there, but there was no real explanation of why the changes.:(

Don't be confused. For more than a decade communicating with customers via the web grew into something that was not only fun but informative. Corporations as big as Yamaha typically have huge websites that provide (mostly) one-way product information - Yamaha.com must have somewhere in excess of 15,000 product pages. Certainly only a few of them dedicated to synthesizers.

The FORUM format allowed two-way communication between end users and the folks at the company concerned specifically with (in this case) synthesizers. I think it became fairly obvious that customers got a lot out of it... Particularly, if you count the number of people who "lurk" (read, but do not post).

I think it is most excellent, that corporately, Yamaha Corporation of America and the parent company in Japan, has taken this concept and put enough resources behind it to ensure that our synthesizer customers can get more than just product specification information but also have access to application tips/tricks, and have an official place (yamahasynth.com) to communicate with those tasked with supporting and those tasked with developing FUTURE products. We want to hear what you are doing (musically), we want to know what you would like to see. We can't promise that every request be met, those decisions are made higher up the corporate ladder, but having direct INPUT should be exciting. I know I'm stoked!

So for fairly obvious reasons, this is done on an official Yamaha website. From my perspective (as one of the resident gurus), I can post screenshots, post articles, post sound clip examples, create videos and I have the resources of Yamaha at my disposal. The bottom line is the Motif-series, MOXF-series, et al, are very popular worldwide. There are many, many folks using them, attempting to read the manual and trying to get the most out of their musical instrument. The more places you can get information the better. Here you have access to the official info.

Here you can tell Yamaha or at least ask Yamaha directly about the products. And if you've been following the evolution since 2001, you can see that customer input was instrumental in how the 84MB Motif classic evoled into the 741MB, Flash expandable XF. Of course, we can't please everyone, but sales indicate we have landed pretty center target for many musicians.

So look at this site as confirmation of Yamaha's dedication to our synthesizer customers (specifically). Please enjoy and participate if the spirit moves you, and if all you do is read and remain in the background - that's cool too. If you have some music you made with your Yamaha Synth, let us hear it. Have a question about operations of your gear, post it. We will give it our full attention. Find the manual confusing (you're not alone) ask for clarification. It's all about music and having fun.

Yamaha is a full line MUSIC company. Welcome to YamahaSynth.com!

Phil,

You really didn't answer our question.

We understand that this a Yamaha website and Motifator is a Keyfax website.

You probably recognize some of us are folks as Motifator regulars. What should we expect going forward in terms of Yamaha presence at Motifator? Should we think of that site as the Shop run by Keyfax and this site as the "real" forums?

We are just confused...or at least I am 😉

You really didn't answer our question.

No, I think I very much did answer your question - please read it again.

When you say "We understand that this is a Yamaha website and Motifator is a Keyfax website." Really, do you?

Let's see if an analogy works for you... When Yamaha decided to go with proprietary Flash Boards it was completely from a desire to control our own destiny.
_ If you have an original Motif (classic) you were happy with getting storage via either SmartMedia cards or SCSI drives and you placed your samples on SIMMs. All of those storage media went the way of the Dodo in the years since then.
_ If you have a Motif ES you could use SmartMedia cards (but they were already on the way out), USB sticks came along (thankfully) but by 2003 now you needed DIMMs for your samples. As SIMMs were increasingly hard to fine.
_ If you have a Motif XS SmartMedia cards have already come and gone, USB sticks are still happening - (but it's starting to get hard to find small ones) and DIMMs are beginning to become harder to find.
Many people still have original Motifs, ES's and XS's - and are finding memory for samples and storage becoming an increasing problem. Technology --- that's how it rolls.

The web situation is very much analogous to this - in order to ensure that going into the future our customers could continue to load and play samples, proprietary Flash Boards made by Yamaha, means we can control how long this type of memory is available. If DIMMs become as rare as Zip drives and SIMMs - what good does that do our synthesizer customers depending on this memory. It was unknown for just how long SmartMedia cards, SCSI drivers, SIMMs, DIMMs would continue to be available.

Given our customers (and we have the research to support this) keep their keyboards for approximately 10 years we need something that is solution oriented. DIMMs started being used in 2003... now much longer do YOU anticipate them being readily available?

Yamaha is a company that manufactures chips (one of many businesses we are in) and it is a commitment to our products to create memory that supports them. This means we are not be at the mercy, if you will, of the camera industry for memory storage (as was the case). SmartMedia was cool and served an immediate crisis because, if you recall, when the Motif was made in 2001, the 3.5" disk drives were already well on the way out. The screaming folks (hope you were not one of them) on the forums called Yamaha all kinds of names for abandoning the floppy disk drive... Yikes! Well, how wrong would it have been to make the original Motif around a 3.5" disk drive. Fortunately, digital cameras were coming into vogue at that time and SmartMedia cards were everywhere. Yamaha made a good call going with the 3.3Volt kind... some companies went with the 5V which disappeared almost immediately. Remember? Maybe not, we do.

Well, WHO KNEW?... Poof! the camera has gone through a dramatic change and storage for cameras evolved away from SM. Most people's camera is in their phone now and external storage media for cameras changed completely. Also think about SIMMs and DIMMs - if you have a crystal ball, then you pick the next area to keep and load your samples.

Yamaha decided that sample storage and being able to customize the basic Wave ROM of a product is what our pro customers desire to do. And the Flash Board is a commitment to ensure the continued availability of that memory for as long as our average customer keeps their gear. The fact that once installed you have quicker real time access to your sounds - and FLASH staves off obsolescence - as new and exciting content can continue to be made available well into the future.

Encouraging as much third party support as possible is always a good thing. And already, third parties are making Flash Boards for Yamaha products!

Many company's involved in synthesizer support got started with the popularity of the DX7 back in the 1980's as third party developers - third party support, in our business, is the greatest form of flattery. It means there is enough interest in our products to warrant someone taking the time to develop things based around the products. That's a good thing!

If you read my post again - I will not repeat it here - you will hopefully start to understand: it is a good thing that Yamaha corporately wants to provide official support for the synthesizer products. Your definition of the word "real" is your own. I, personally, don't know what that means, Brian. "Real" as opposed to what?

This is the OFFICIAL if that is what you mean by 'real'. We don't see that as the same thing.

There are Facebook, Yahoo, and other online groups that are in support of Yamaha products. They are all 'real'. They come and go over the years - you can visit and join as many of them as you have time or the will to join. YamahaSynth.com is one that has the official support of the parent company.

I no longer have the capability to create tutorials and/or articles on Motifator.com as I did in the past. And that is a fact. I do, however, have the capability to create articles, videos, tutorials etc., etc. here on YamahaSynth.com and I plan to do so.

You can ask your questions wherever you feel you are going to get a good answer. We would love it, if all third party forums were self-supporting and that each community of users helped each other get more out of the product... That would be great - that's healthy! And is a GOOD THING, there is no downside to that at all.

I personally took it upon myself to spend a lot of my own time developing the relationships with end users on the web through Motifator. It was something that seemed like the right thing to do - and is totally in line with our corporate philosophy to create KANDO... wherever and whenever possible. I plan to continue to do so right here of Yamaha Synth - because it is the right thing to do.

I'll quote Nate above: (who is the Marketing Manager for Music Production at Yamaha Corp. of America): "Regarding other online communities, those are independent entities and we're not privy to their endeavors; our resources are entirely focused on ys.com."

Think of YamahaSynth.com as our FLASH BOARD - it is built in-house, and we can control its destiny... for however long our customers care to take advantage of our support. We hope to keep the data healthy/secure and free of spam, and hope to keep the (good) information flowing, bi-directionally.

We hope that there is nothing here that is confusing or that you don't understand. If you belong to a Facebook group or a Yahoo group or any other online web group or Forum that are focused on synthesizers - it's all good! The more the merrier!

As for me, this is a place where I have the resources to supply customers with, what I hope is, quality support. I don't have that anywhere else. If I don't know an answer (and yes that does happen) I can usually get a response from engineering and pass it along. It is not always good news from the user's perspective but at least it comes from the source.

I've watched other websites that are supposed to be in support of competing synthesizers, fall into the worst kind of spamming and flaming wars (which are always non-productive) - where no one has a proper answer so it quickly reverts to 'conspiracy theories' and people just making things up. Like that show "Life After Humans" - quickly the forum deteriorates into like a wild kingdom... with post after post about how the manual is this or that, or the company doesn't want you to make music, because they are only interested in money and making you buy more stuff... etc., etc., etc. (absurd!)

Make music - ask a question - get a good answer - get back to making music!

With YamahaSynth.com you have an official place to get answers and that, as I mentioned in the post you says doesn't answer the question, is proof of our dedication to our products and our customers. Anything still not clear?

Bookmark this site. When you cannot find the answer in any other locations on the Internet you can certainly come here and bug us. 🙂 I am joined here by a team of product specialist - so this is part of the Yamaha commitment to synthesizers - along with YamahaMusicSoft.com, which now has more support for pro synthesizers - previously it was the domain of portable and home style keyboards.

If you are confused (about a Yamaha Synth/Music Production product)... you're in the right place!
🙂
Welcome to Yamaha Synth!

OK fine, you have answered my question. Yamaha no longer participates at Motifator.com and if we want answers from Yamaha we have to ask here.

I love ya Phil, but sometimes shorter answers are better 😉

Some times if you throw enough words at something there might be some of it gets understood 😉

Outstanding! 🙂