One of the articulations provided in XA CONTROL is Key-Off. This allows an Element to start at the release of a key or the release of the sustain pedal.

The Damper Resonance algorithm in the Motif XF is tied to the action of the sustain pedal, such that when the pedal is engaged the Damper Resonance is applied. This is extremely programmable... so before you request a firmware update 🙂 please explore what is already provided. There are several feature/functions Yamaha developed for the programmable synths, you can read about them here:

Half Dampering - Damper Resonance - Key Off

lol I only requested twice Phil! I guess once for MOX and once for MOTIF XF 😀 you have a pretty good memory. When you press the pedal on an acoustic piano, all the felts moves up causing a specific noise. I want to recreate it.

Therefore what I'm asking is for playing a sample at the start of the press not at the release. In other words, I want to assign a specific sample to be played when I press the pedal immediately not when I release it.

Yes, I understand what you are saying. No, the sustain pedal cannot send a note-on. As a recording engineer I would spend time and effort to absolutely minimize that sound in recording acoustic pianos. As a musician I understand the feel of that, but am uninterested in the sound of it. I would again, respectfully request you explore the Damper Resonance Effect, Key-off and the Half Damper function as these are designed to give a great degree of control over just what you have decided should be a sample that comes in when the pedal is pressed (that is certainly one way to solve it it, I guess) but you'd need to be able to generate a note-on with the sustain pedal... How would this sound vary? Being triggered by a sustain pedal wouldn't give it any pitch relationship... It would just be a noise.

The Damper Resonance Effect is triggered *when* you step on the sustain pedal, it has a pitch reference to the keys/pitches currently engaged. That combined with the Key-Off which triggers a sample of piano felts releasing and hammers falling back, satisfies both my engineering requirements and my musician's feel requirements. We are talking about a huge subtlety here, and I get it - but the pressing of the pedal is of less interest to me, personally, than the release of the pedal. Although I can also see that on some piano pieces the peddling can be intense, still, if you play around with the Damper Resonance Effect you may discover a way to accomplish what you wish... You have an effect that is triggered by the sustain pedal.

Let us know.

Hello "A",

what I can offer to you is also not exactly what you have been initially asking for, as there really seems to be no way to create "Note On" events by pressing the SUSTAIN pedal (unless you purchase commercially available S/W and/or H/W solutions which might do that trick). However, I can show you a solution which might be one step into the direction you indicated in your request.

If it helps to achieve your desired sound experience, you could try out a special method I discovered some time ago. I found out that - contrary to all available Yamaha information - it IS possible to use the SUSTAIN pedal as a physical controller source for much more than just the ordinary "HOLD 1" (cc064) function. That includes the (obviously unknown or disputed) ability of the Motif series to alter individual voice element parameters via the SUSTAIN pedal without any further S/W or H/W modification, finally incorporating your own customized samples/effects to your pedal strokes instead of invoking the built-in damper/resonance options only.

For example, you could "co-trigger" your own related damper resonance sound sample each time you press any key on the keybed; however, the method I'd like to point out here makes use of the fact that your additional sample/effect will only be audible if the SUSTAIN pedal is pressed down in addition. In conjunction with an FC3 (half damper) pedal, you could even "work in" your own samples using the desired audio level and/or effect amount, depending on how hard you press the pedal. The only drawback of my discovery is that you have to give up on using the synthesizer's "foot switch" (FS) function, as my trick will occupy its internal resources; in fact they will be "abused" to make that new "SUSTAIN goodie" work instead.

Sounds strange? Yes it does, and it took me some time to figure that out, but it really works - at least on my MOXF.

Here's the link to my detailed description - just check it out yourself if you like. Personally I'm using that "feature" already since almost two years, of course the related settings are also permanently manifested in my UTILITY settings. If you intend to use that workaround with your Motif XF as well, just let me know if it worked there, too.

Thanks Phil and Martin for the solutions. Martin it's very helpful to add the resonance while you're playing and I'll keep it in mind but what I'm saying is extremely simple! When you press the pedal on a piano it creates a static noise even if you don't play a note. I just want to trigger a "note on" event or let's say assign a note or a sample playback to the pedal. I know you can do this in some arrangers (Tyros I guess and may be PSR series and Korg for sure). But I should agree that it has very little usage as Phil pointed out.