Do you mean you want to play the sequence by pressing a key on the keyboard or just by pressing a key?

If you press the play button it will take you to the play/record screen

Touch the song name bar at the top

Press Load

Then content type Song&Perf

Then select your song from the list below

Pressing play again then plays that song with the performance you associated with it

Yes I mean just by pressing a key on the keyboard - without having to go to song name, loading, selecting from the list...

I'm looking for a simple "save to this" fix for fast access onstage. Is there one?

Yes. There is.

Pressing a key on Montage will always either trigger audio playback (or trigger a synth engine tone, if FM-X). The Audio data can be an internally stored Waveform that Yamaha created or one that you have created yourself... so you will simply need to transfer your "song" to a .wav, then assign that as a Montage Waveform in an AWM2 PART. We recommend DRUM KITs because they do not have to have to rely on you holding a key down to play the full audio clip. This will allow you to assign it to a key and have it playback whenever you recall this Performance and you touch that specific KEY to which you have assigned it.

In order to accomplish this you will need to take the following steps:

_ Take your .MID File and transfer it to your computer using a USB stick (Later this year the Utility "Montage Connect" will allow you to export this directly from the internal recorder to your computer).
_ If you have not used Cubase AI yet or if you are using another DAW, let us know. You can setup Cubase so that when you literally drag and drop the .MID file into an EMPTY Project it will create the setup for you.

_ You'll want to turn this into a .wav file - you can either do this by recording audio to your DAW or create a .Wav file by simply playing the .MID from Cubase back to your Montage. The Montage can record itself to an attached USB stick as a .wav file. If you need help creating a .wav from your recording, again, let us know. Either method will work.

_ You will want to edit (TRIM) the .wav so that audio begins precisely at key on. The Montage, like the XF before it, has a silence detection algorithm. It is designed to play samples which typically are cued so that audio begins precisely at note-on. And as long as there are no long silences your wav will playback in its entirety.

_ Once you have your data as .wav you can then import that as a Montage USER WAVEFORM.

The WAVEFORM can be mapped to any key C0~C6 of a Drum Kit Part and can be set so that RECEIVE NOTE OFF = OFF, set to SINGLE trigger, and the DECAY 2 TIME is set to HOLD, this will allow the audio to play from beginning to end without you having to hold the key. You can create a SILENT NOTE in the same "Alternate Group" to act as a stop key.

We can put together a short article outlining this. But before we do, are you able to create and edit this .wav?
In response to your question, I just did this as an exercise to see how long it would take - longest part was waiting for the song to play through. But you have to be able to create and trim the wav, this is important.

Hey thanks for the reply Phil, and on a Sunday no less! (I love your detailed walk-throughs, written tutorials, and videos on YouTube btw - you're the best!)

OK - yes, no problem creating .wav files in ProTools and Loading them into the Montage. It plays just fine. But - how do I "import that as a Montage USER WAVEFORM?" It simply loads and plays. I then do not know where to go to change the Receive note off, etc... which edit screen to go to...

If I open a drum kit I don't know how to get the .wav file linked to this, even though I can limit this to just one note as I want to do... (then I can put other sounds in other parts to play along with the .wav file).

Thanks for your help!

Once you have your fully prepared .wav file, you can load this into Montage where it creates a WAVEFORM.

A WAVEFORM is defined as an audio sample that has Montage parameters added to it. These parameters allow Montage to address the audio as a musical entity. It is given a Key Range, which includes a single Key that determines its original pitch, and how it responds when played across a region of keys; it is also given a Velocity Range that determines how loud it plays back when triggered, etc. These additional parameters make an audio sample something you can use musically, because now you can perform the sound instead of it playing exactly same every time when its was a .wav. You can now control how loud and at what pitch, by how you trigger it. You also can control how long it plays, etc., etc.

A .wav can be loaded into the Montage USER area where you can work with it (from UTILITY), or you can load it directly to the Part you wish to use it in.

A .wav can be loaded directly to an AWM2 Normal or Drum Part directly. Here's how:
Recall the PART you'd like to use this data in -in your case the Drum kit. You can use an existing Kit or select an INIT Drum (AWM2).
Drum Kits are preferred because you do not have to hold down a drum kit program for the entire audio clip to play, as with a "normal" program. So drum keys make perfect candidates for audio clips.

Press [EDIT]
Select the PART so that Part Edit parameters appear
Touch the "Drum Key" box lower right corner and select the KEY you wish to assign your audio.
Touch "OSC/Tune" to view the assigned Waveform for this Key
Touch the "New Waveform" box - this will take you directly to the Contents > Load > Audio File screen.
Find your .wav file and touch it to load its data into the Drum Key location

Again to make a long audio clip play without having to hold the Key down you will want to ensure the following settings, on the "OSC//Tune" screen:
"Receive Note Off" = Off
"Assign mode" = Single
"Group" = 1. (This will allow you to set another Key assigned to this Group to stop playback... Only one sound in a group can happen at a time... It's how closed hihats stop open hihats.)

Touch "Filter" - make sure filter Cutoff is 255 allowing all frequencies through
Touch "Level/Pan" - set the DECAY2 (Time) parameter = Hold (127)
Set Decay1 (Level) = 127
Set "Level" as required
Touch "Element EQ" - here you can significantly boost the audio output of your audio clip. This EQ device can be used as a straight +6dB, +12dB, or +18dB Boost. This can help quiet audio clips from getting lost when played with other Montage programs.

Name and [STORE] your new Performance.
And make sure, before you replace your USER area you make a backup USER File.

Oh that's beautiful!! Thank you BM, you're the best. I can even put other performances in to play along with the .wav file.

The only thing I can't seem to accomplish is setting a different key to stop the playback. If you could enlighten me on that, I'll be all set. Thanks so much!

I usually use a #/b key adjacent to the audio clip as my "Stop" Key. By placing any other drum Key in the same Group, will cause this key to stop any other key in the group. This is how the closed hihat stops the open hihat, and the triangle mute stops the open triangle.

Make sure the KEY has an active Waveform, you can set its volume to 0 (it does not have to make a sound) it's only used to stop the long audio clip from sounding.

If you used a drum Kit with other sounds assigned simply set the Group parameter the same as your audio clip. Yamaha typically uses Group 1 for the hihat closed (F#1), the pedal hihat (G#1), and open hihat (A#1) any of those keys will stop your audio clip if you set it to Group 1.

I'm not sure what you meant by the #/b key - but it still worked like a charm. I love it! TY

#/b = sharp or flat (they're musical terms). 🙂

Well of course, didn't know your context, but I've got it. Thanks.

Thanks for good advices Big Mister. I've loaded a drumloop (wav) into a part (drumset) as You describes here. It works fine but it seems like the loop stops because i play the pianosound together with it. I wonder if it runs out of polyphony. What do You tkink?

I've also made a midifile who is trigging the loop every bar. It works fine but everytime i turn off the Montage I loose the midifile even if I have saved it and saved the song. I then start the loop with the play button.

Trond wrote:
I've also made a midifile who is trigging the loop every bar. It works fine but everytime i turn off the Montage I loose the midifile even if I have saved it and saved the song. I then start the loop with the play button.

This means you're using the recorder to do something. The recorder's function is to provide a scratchpad for very basic operations. Retaining information after powerdown (basically the edit buffer of the recorder) is not a supported feature [EDIT: not exactly true - see BM's response]. Nor should it be. You're going to want to transition to using an ARP to trigger the loop instead of a MIDI file. An ARP is basically a MIDI file. The nice thing is that latest firmware allows you to turn MIDI in to an ARP - so you're already half way there. Once you have an ARP - you can pair that ARP with your performance - then the performance will "pull up" the ARP automatically. Of course [STORE] your new performance once you get the ARP setup. Overall, I believe this is a case of using the wrong tool for the job - the right tool exists - so just migrate to using the right thing. [EDIT: ] Reading BM's later post about how to save song information to pair it with a performance - looks like Montage has you covered if you want to continue to use the recorder. My bias is towards ARP - but you have your options -- "wrong tool" is not applicable.

Pivot.

If you add a single sound layered with piano - polyphony is very unlikely to be what is cutting off the sound. I'm not sure what your full configuration is - but many trigger events are full-keyboard so this may be the case. There's a short list of possibilities - but it takes a little more details on your configuration. Make sure that wav you are triggering is not set to monophonic or set the key range to be only the single note you use as a trigger. There are a few other possibilities - but what it is doing is likely what you told it to do which is not appropriate for what you're trying to get out of it (I know, last sentence is kind of a too generic statement which is nearly always true and not very helpful). But every once and a while its good to be reminded that electronic devices are as "smart"/"dumb" as the programming we (users) feed it.

You should not lose the MIDI file - there is no volatile memory in Montage. Once you create or load a .mid file, it will be found in your Data Utility (Song) folder.

Press [UTILITY] > touch "Contents" > "Data Utility" > touch the "Song" folder.

Hopefully you gave it a name; if not it's in there with its default name "NewSong xx"

You can link the Performance with Song.
Load the .mid file or Song
Once you have both recalled the appropriate Performance and have them playing properly together... you'll want to touch the box "Store Song and Performance Settings"
This will allow you restore both together when you go to the PLAY/REC screen.

Restoring both: Touch the Song title area
A pop-in menu appears
Touch "LOAD"
You are taken to the Contents > Load > "Song&Perf" screen

This will work as long as you are mindful of the location of your Performance. If the Performance is a Preset or a Library, it will always be in its proper location for recall (as these are permanent residences). If, however, your Performance is in the USER Bank, against make sure the proper Performsnce data is loaded into USER.

ALTERNATE METHOD
Convert your trigger note MIDI data to an Arp
A phrase as many measures as the loop phrase should suffice.
The Arp phrase will remain stored with the Part, when you store your Performance.

Wow. Thanks a lot for very good help! This instrument is just fantastic! I've played Yamaha for many years and have a sponsordeal with Yamaha Scandinavia. I've always used a digital piano together with Motif but now I just travel with the Montage. No rack or anything. Just amazing!