Hi James,
Welcome to Yamaha Synth. You'll find that you'll get to understand the answers quicker through using the correct terminology. There are several ways to move from instrument sound to instrument sound without sonic interruption, but that does not mean that just any method will work. This is why I start by mentioning the terminolgy. There are no "patches" so even though we know what you mean, we cannot respond in kind because it is not a term officially used in MONTAGE.

The behavior when moving from Performance-to-Performance is going to be different from when moving from Part-to-Part. Those terms, "Performance" and "Part", we will use because as you get to understand the MONTAGE, these terms (which could easily be referred to generally as "patches"), need to be understood as different specific entities within the MONTAGE.

So knowing and using the correct terminology will help you with this. Because there are many ways to setup your programs in MONTAGE, if you want to move from one instrument to another while maintaining control of the first via the sustain pedal you want to move between PARTS of a Performance.

A Performance can have a maximum of sixteen Parts. Each Part could contain a different instrument sound. You can setup so you can access each instrument by a front panel button.

For example, you could have Strings in Part 1, hit and hold a chord with the sustain pedal, then touch [PART SELECT 2] to play the full keyboard with a piano sound. This works because you are switching transmit channels... you can latch cc064 on the first channel, switch to another channel and play the new channel with full control... and when you finally release the sustain pedal, the first channel will dutifully respond to the command.

But If you are changing Programs as in advancing from one to another on a single channel, by definition and default, an all controllers off message is sent. You can avoid this by placing your desired instrument's in a single Performance.

Because the MONTAGE keyboard can transmit on as many as eight MIDI channels at once, all controllers and effects can transition to any other Performance of eight or less Parts, without loss or interruption of sound or sustain. This is called SSS (Seamless Sound Switching). This SSS works for moving between one Multi Part Performance w/up to a limit of 8 Parts and one other of the same configuration.

When switching between Single Parts of a Performance using PART SELECT, you can switch between all sixteen without and sonic or controller interruption. This works between all Parts in the Performance, at all times.

You have the ability to have the "Controller Reset" parameter set to either RESET (default) or HOLD (in which case, your controllers remain live between Program Changes). This is useful when wishing to have a global Volume pedal... instead of one that resets to a stored value

You set this parameter
[UTILITY] > "Settings" > "MIDI I/O" > set CONTROLLER RESET as you desire.

For a basic look at how you can configure your own custom Performances please see this two Part article. It gives examples of exactly how to setup to get the most out of your instrument:

https://yamahasynth.com/component/k2/performance-basics-and-the-live-set-1

https://yamahasynth.com/component/k2/performance-basics-and-the-live-set-ii

Long story short:
The Montage resets the sustain midi data when switching from one performance to another one. For me it was crystal clear from the beginning what James was talking about. Unfortunately, setting the controller behavior from reset to hold on the utility page doesn't change the fact that on the next switched performance the initial status of the sustain pedal is off.
This unfortunately makes changes between two performances which may contain a piano or e. piano or anything which is played in a similar or same way as a piano not seamless.
I was playing a Kurzweil PC3 and Forte before and there the Sustain Message remained on while switching from one performance to another one. It makes musically more sense than the current solution implemented on the Montage.

The only way to mimic the function requested is to do this within the context of a single performance. You cannot have a note switch mid-stream between one performance and the new switched performance as this neither fits the "SSS" model or the non-"SSS" model implemented by Montage.

Within the context of a performance - you can have the target (after the switch) PART (tone[s]) un-muted and the current PART (tone[s]) muted at the time of a switch. Mute or volume control for the PART work equally as well. So what would be happening as that the target PART is always triggered and waiting to "come out" - but is muted or set at a zero volume. Then when you want to switch - you unmute the target PART (or switch to an audible volume level) and have the "old" PART muted (or switched to zero volume). This means that your 1-8 PART slots have to have enough free to handle all the new PART(s) you are targeting.

There are actually more options on how to handle this particular transition. I've outlined the how-to for accomplishing just changing mid-stream a sound through a sustain. However, assuming there is a short-list of PART(s) you want to participate in this -- and assuming this is at one time within some tune -- there are other things you can do "around" this inflection point to manage the performance (Montage "performance") settings before/after the inflection point. Because if you're going to "retire" some PART(s) - you could, after the inflection point, load a new performance with only the new PART(s) during a rest or time where Montage's "SSS" can be leveraged.

I think the end-game of what you're trying to accomplish can be done with existing controls -- although not as direct as you see some other keyboard accomplishing this.

Even if you run out of PARTs (1-8) - there are some tricks you could do to get around this. Using a loop back cable (MIDI), setting some PART(s) 1-8 zone control(s) to MIDI channel target 9-16, and using mute/volume on PART(s) 9-16 comes to mind. This can cause its own set of problems - but a possible way out to carry you through.

Bad Mister wrote:

Hi James,
Welcome to Yamaha Synth. You'll find that you'll get to understand the answers quicker through using the correct terminology. There are several ways to move from instrument sound to instrument sound without sonic interruption, but that does not mean that just any method will work. This is why I start by mentioning the terminolgy. There are no "patches" so even though we know what you mean, we cannot respond in kind because it is not a term officially used in MONTAGE.

The behavior when moving from Performance-to-Performance is going to be different from when moving from Part-to-Part. Those terms, "Performance" and "Part", we will use because as you get to understand the MONTAGE, these terms (which could easily be referred to generally as "patches"), need to be understood as different specific entities within the MONTAGE.

So knowing and using the correct terminology will help you with this. Because there are many ways to setup your programs in MONTAGE, if you want to move from one instrument to another while maintaining control of the first via the sustain pedal you want to move between PARTS of a Performance.

A Performance can have a maximum of sixteen Parts. Each Part could contain a different instrument sound. You can setup so you can access each instrument by a front panel button.

For example, you could have Strings in Part 1, hit and hold a chord with the sustain pedal, then touch [PART SELECT 2] to play the full keyboard with a piano sound. This works because you are switching transmit channels... you can latch cc064 on the first channel, switch to another channel and play the new channel with full control... and when you finally release the sustain pedal, the first channel will dutifully respond to the command.

But If you are changing Programs as in advancing from one to another on a single channel, by definition and default, an all controllers off message is sent. You can avoid this by placing your desired instrument's in a single Performance.

Because the MONTAGE keyboard can transmit on as many as eight MIDI channels at once, all controllers and effects can transition to any other Performance of eight or less Parts, without loss or interruption of sound or sustain. This is called SSS (Seamless Sound Switching). This SSS works for moving between one Multi Part Performance w/up to a limit of 8 Parts and one other of the same configuration.

When switching between Single Parts of a Performance using PART SELECT, you can switch between all sixteen without and sonic or controller interruption. This works between all Parts in the Performance, at all times.

You have the ability to have the "Controller Reset" parameter set to either RESET (default) or HOLD (in which case, your controllers remain live between Program Changes). This is useful when wishing to have a global Volume pedal... instead of one that resets to a stored value

You set this parameter
[UTILITY] > "Settings" > "MIDI I/O" > set CONTROLLER RESET as you desire.

For a basic look at how you can configure your own custom Performances please see this two Part article. It gives examples of exactly how to setup to get the most out of your instrument:

https://yamahasynth.com/component/k2/performance-basics-and-the-live-set-1

https://yamahasynth.com/component/k2/performance-basics-and-the-live-set-ii

Thanks for the clarification and the info.

So like Sladjan said above, there's currently no way to "Turn On" the Sustain Message when going from one performance to another correct?

Could this be added in the next MONTAGE update? The Kronos does it, the Kurzweil's do it, so why not the MONTAGE?

Thanks!

Sladjan wrote:

Long story short:
The Montage resets the sustain midi data when switching from one performance to another one. For me it was crystal clear from the beginning what James was talking about. Unfortunately, setting the controller behavior from reset to hold on the utility page doesn't change the fact that on the next switched performance the initial status of the sustain pedal is off.
This unfortunately makes changes between two performances which may contain a piano or e. piano or anything which is played in a similar or same way as a piano not seamless.
I was playing a Kurzweil PC3 and Forte before and there the Sustain Message remained on while switching from one performance to another one. It makes musically more sense than the current solution implemented on the Montage.

Thanks for your reply Sladjan! Perhaps if enough MONTAGE users ask for this feature we will see it in a future update!

@Jason,
I'm trying really hard to understand what you want to explain but I fail completely. Somehow you end with a loop back cable?! How did you manage to go so far?

Put simply:
The Montage has 640 slots for performances. That is really a lot.
I guess that most people program multiple performances for a single song if it is a complex song requiring a lot of different sounds and then they switch from one performance (verse) to the next (chorus), then again to the next maybe (solo) and so on. You can do this by taping in the live set screen or using a switch pedal so that you can focus on playing instead of being interrupted by reaching to the screen for selection.
The thing is that jumping from one performance to the next performance resets the sustain control message regardless whether you use a single or 8 part performance or whether you create a loop with a midi cable. On piano parts this prevents a natural and seamless transition from - as I already said - one piano type sound to another one.
The only possible way to overcome this is to use one single part and program two different sounds by using the 8 elements and set the one sound/element group (for example piano) to A. SW Off (the Assign Switch next to the Modulation wheel) and the other sound (for example E. piano) to A. SW1 On. Now, switching the Assign Switch 1 On and Off will create a seamless transition between two piano type sounds in a musical way. The problem with this is that 8 Elements are often not enough because the best pianos on the Montage use them all up.

I would also like to see that the sustain is carrying over to the next performance when switching from one performance with SSS to another. That would make it much more valuable. I would use SSS more often, when this was the case.

My problem is that there are several possible ways to switch seamlessly between sounds (I am using the term sound in a non technical way as what sound I can hear when pressing keys, if it is performance, a part, or an element) in a song:

• Use SSS to switch between performances: Disadvantage is that sustain is not carried over
• Use different scenes: Does not work for me in most cases, because the old sound is muted immediately
• Using the Assign switches to mute one and enable the other: Works fine but is limited to 3 combinations and is difficult to program. And the XA Control does not exist for FM-X parts (at least I did not find it). Also if you have some sounds assigned to "Key off", they will sound in all combinations...

@Sladjan: You are not limited to the 8 elements of one part. You can use different parts for the different pianos. Set all elements of the first part to Normal, set all elements of the second part to AS1, set all elements of a third part to AS2. You can also combine multiple parts to sound at the same time. The only limit is that you have to switch off the "Key off" parts. And as I mentioned FM-X does not support that.

@Sladjan:

The crux of my suggestion was to try to stick within the confines of a single performance. The reason to span multiple performances is usually because you run out of PARTs to handle doing everything within the limitations of a single PART. This is, in part, due to only having access to PARTs 1-8 under local keyboard control. This is where the possibility of using a loopback comes in so that you can extend the local keyboard control to additional PARTs.

It wasn't altogether clear to me if the sustained should continue to sound the same or switch to the target performance's sound (but still sustained).

If the goal is to keep the original tone sustained - then XA (expanded articulation) within a single performance is the way to go.

All roads lead to keeping the solution within a single performance which may pull for using more than 8 PART slots depending. If so, there may be a way out as presented.

Hi Jason,
it seems you didn't understand the problem but you could easily try it for yourself on the Montage. It doesn't matter if you use a single part performance or a multipart performance (within the limits for seamless switching). It simply doesn't matter.
Take a single part performance with a piano part, hold sustain, play a chord, switch to a new single part performance (the sustain pedal being hold), hit the keys and they will not be sustained.
Do you understand now?
This is what the topic starter clearly stated, regardless of the fact that he didn't use the "right" terminology.
XA is certainly not the way to go because - as I already said in my previous post - you cannot squeeze two pianos into one single part due to lack of elements.
The way to go is that Yamaha reconsiders this and let the sustain message go thru to the next performance so that the sustain message doesn't get reset. That's the way how Kurzweil works, I remember that the Roland Fantom G also did this (the Fantom G was one of the first Roland keyboard to offer real seamless switching in the same way like the Montage does it by limiting the max. number of parts). Now, I'd like to hear from a Kronos user how Kronos works in regard to this.

But fact is that the SSS in its present form doesn't work well if a sustain pedal is being used.

I simply was encouraging trying to keep any switching within the confines of a single performance. I have no data on what PARTs exactly the OP is trying to juggle and so advice has to remain high level until details are given.

I'd request the OP lay out what exactly are all the PARTs in the two performances as a starting point. Then some detail about the tune would be needed to see if there was an opportunity to change how the PARTs were managed. One has to get creative to work around the "shortcomings".

Although it would be nice to change some of this behavior (I've asked for lots of things) - one also has to make the system work as-is to make it through a gig.

There's a larger list of possible management techniques.

I'm an advocate for reporting possible areas of improvement - but then you have to transition to what's going to work with the existing functionality. Because who knows when, if ever, any of this is going to change.

I cannot program the firmware to change this behavior - so why should I focus on how the sustain pedal works through performance changes? That's been documented - so my goal here is to arrive at something that does work for the OP.

Here is the deal regardless of details.

Seamless Switching between two different performances/live sets doesn't work in the way that a sustained part is carried over to the new performance where the new performance would continue to use the open status of the sustain pedal. That means, switching between performances and a continuous playing of pianos is impossible on the Montage.

The only solution is to use two parts within the same performance and set the Assign Switch of one Part to On while setting the Assign Switch on the other Part to Off, all this for each single element which is used in the part. Now, a seamless switch is performed by pressing the A. SW to On or Off status. This will work not only for two parts but for all 16 if someone maxes the number of parts out.

Is there a way to have 2 sustain pedals connected to the Montage and while holding down one of them, you could switch performances and then use the 2nd sustain to sustain the new performance.

I know it's not perfect but could be a work-a-round.

To further "articulate" the suggestion - here's what I did here experimentally:

Using the MIDI loop back ...

PART 1 = "Cool Drive" (which is a guitar)
It had XA control to switch sounds - so I just turned off the elements which this PART setup for the A.SW1 ON. For the other elements, I setup A.SW OFF for XA control.
Zone MIDI transmit channel = 9

PART 2 = "Glassy Rezonant" (which is a string part)
I set XA control to A.SW OFF for all active (on) elements
Zone MIDI transmit channel = 10

PART 3 = "Modern Jazz Horns"
I set XA control to A.SW OFF for all active elements
Zone MIDI transmit channel = 11

PART 4 = "8-8-8-8-6-2-2-0-0" (an organ)
I set XA control to A.SW OFF for all elements
Zone MIDI transmit channel = 12

PART 5 = "Upright Bass AF.1"
I set XA control to A.SW OFF for all elements except legato and key off. NOTE: this is the rub for XA control. There's not an XA control for "Legato AND A.SW OFF" or "Key Off AND A.SW1 ON", etc. So there are certain articulations you cannot support with the "fake SSS" trick. This means you would normally just not have those features and turn the elements off. This may or may not be a deal breaker in certain cases - but is a "corner case". This works fine for the bass as not much is lost - but this is a matter of personal taste what is important to retain or not.
Zone MIDI transmit channel = 13

PART 9 = "FM Synth Lead 1"
FM Part - so no XA control. This is one limitation of the technique. Can use A.SW1 ON to unmute and A.SW1 OFF to mute this. This means the PART will switch abruptly. For now, I just have it layered (on all the time).

PART 10-13 = "CFX Concert" (piano) and the supporting "PIANO" PARTs that make up this 4-part instrument
All active elements are set to "A.SW1 ON" except for PART 13 which is the Key Off noise. I just left this alone so the key off noise is always there even when the piano is not sounding. Could have just disabled this PART/element and is one of those "corner case" articulations that cannot be supported as mentioned before.

Note: PARTs 1-5 are all non-overlapping different keyboard ranges so the bass in the bottom, then organ, then horns, then strings, then guitar at top.
Part 9 (synth) is only the top couple octaves
Parts 10-13 are full range.

So when I have A.SW1 (and A.SW2) OFF - I get my bass/strings/horns/guitar split along with the layered synth at the top.
When I have A.SW1 ON - then this turns off everything but the synth (still only on upper octaves) and the CFX piano is full-range across the keys.

I'm able to sustain anything I want and keep the sustain pedal down through transitions of A.SW1 - which will switch in/out one set of instruments vs. another. If I used an AWM2 part for the synth - then PARTs 9-16 could have been one entire set of PARTs that would be "switched out" as if it were a full performance and PARTs 1-8 could be another set. Sustain working as intended.

The earlier thought was that one would use two performances presumably because they ran out of PARTs in the first performance. This can be overcome by using the loopback and gain more PARTs.

XA control is one tactic - although there are other less technical ways to do this.

Say you have a PART you only use during the intro (and maybe outro too). Somewhere in the tune, before you have to use all the PARTs - there may be a rest you can use as a 2nd performance which drops the intro PART. And due to the nature of the tune - does not need the "next performance sees I have the sustain pedal mashed down through the performance transition". Creative picking of your spots to "break" from one performance to another may be a way out. Maybe not - I have no real details of your tune/song/composition...

Points of Order

"The Montage resets the sustain midi data when switching from one performance to another one."

This is not a true statement. The MONTAGE does not reset the Sustain when moving from one Performance to another.
Try it, if you own one. Perhaps the Sustain pedal of this user is not working or they are misunderstanding how it works.

The Sustain pedal is a standard cc064 which can be used to hold one playable sound into another playable sound.

"Playable sound" here is used to mean a MONTAGE Performance used as a playable instrument.... if you know the MONTAGE this means a Performance containing between 1 and 8 Parts under KBD CTRL. All but one of 2044 Factory Performances are examples.

Holding the Sustain pedal will hold the the performance sound so that you can begin playing the second Performance; the first sound will remain until you release the pedal or the keys holding the first sound. Try it, call up "CFX + FM EP" play it, at some point step on the Sustain pedal to hold a chord, switch to another Performance... the Piano will Sustain while you begin to play the the second Performance.

If you wish to use the Sustain pedal on the newly selected piano, then you would keep the notes sustaining on the first instrument by holding the keys down, switch to the new sound, the Sustain pedal is available for use...

Obviously, if Arpeggios are involved, moving to a new Performance would cause just what you'd expect... the Arps are not carried across the Program Change (if you are asking why, maybe this is not for you).

The thing is that jumping from one performance to the next performance resets the sustain control message regardless whether you use a single or 8 part performance or whether you create a loop with a midi cable. On piano parts this prevents a natural and seamless transition from - as I already said - one piano type sound to another one.

WRONG. All due respect, I'm sure in your situation that is what is happening. You need to find out WHY.

That is not that is happening on the majority of MONTAGE owners units. Sorry, you are having this issue, Yamaha wants you to have an instrument that is able to "seamless transition from one piano type sound to another one."

Can anyone else out there NOT transition between the Bosendorfer "Imperal Grand", and the Yamaha "CFX Concert" with the Sustain pedal down.

SSS will let you move between any Performances with a max of 8 KBD CTRL PARTs and any other with a maximum of 8.

Call up your piano Performance... "Imperial Grand"
On the Performance Home screen, begin to play
hit Chord and grab it with the Sustain pedal or if you'd like to use the Sustain on the new piano, hold the Chord with your fingers...
While holding that Chord call up any other Performance "CFX Concert"
You should still hear your held Chord on the original "Imperial Grand"

If your MONTAGE can't do that, please let us know.