Hi Mark,
Thanks for the question.

Current situation is you choose from the 3,200 drum grooves provided on-board. Each Drum Kit comes pre-assigned with several Drum arpeggios associated, but you are free to reassign any arp to any kit. Drum arpeggio phrases can be used in the traditional way (where they sound as drums) from one or more Parts of the Performance, however, they can also be used as rhythmic modulation sources (where you can use them to influence any number of destinations including Envelope Follower and/or the Vocoder, etc.,). The 3200 drum phrases are provided as arpeggios which can be customized as to feel, and swing, via Play FX; you can control which instruments sound, and individual drum kits KEYS can be routed to any of the 32 USB audio outputs when you wish to record a drum in isolation. Each Performance has 8 ARP SELECT buttons, each button can contain control phrases for the Parts under Arp Control. Each PERFORMANCE can have 8 MOTION SEQUENCES associated with it, accessible via 8 Motion Seq buttons. Arp Select and Motion Sequence Select can be done manually or linked to one of 8 (blue) SCENE buttons.

It is fairly easy to add a Kit to most Performances. If one of the eight possible Parts in a Keyboard Controlled Performance is available, you touch the "+" icon in the slot, you're taken to Category Search, when you can search for a Drum Kit. If you select a "Rock" drum kit, it will come with appropriate arps pre assigned, choose a jazz kit something appropriate is initially assigned, and so on. You can change the arps as you require.

Those interested in recording their own drums can record them as either MIDI data or as audio to your favorite DAW.
Other potential sources of drums can be external devices, including MIDI sync'd devices, iPads/iPhones Apps, handheld playback devices, or actual drum kits via mic input. The Montage feature Beat Detection and can generate clock from an A/D Input. The A/D Input not only has its own Part on the Montage mixer, it has its own dedicated Dual Insertion Effect blocks, plus settings can be dynamically controlled and assigned to the Super Knob and the other physical controllers.

I noticed that some presets have drums set to activate on the scene buttons but when I tried to add drums to a preset and have it turn off on a stored scene it stayed active. So what am i not doing wrong where the drums that I load in the preset--- stay active when I want them to stop when a press a stored scene button??:(

Answered here

When using A/D input for synchronizing it works pretty fine with full songs of CD-tracks. It is also easy to define the standard BPM in the settings. But when playing live I sometimes need to synchronize the ARP to the band. Regarding the envelope follower I won't be asking for 9/8 17/8 changes like Steve Lukather's playing Youtube and Score. But even easy songs with a BPM=130, just following the kick-drum with a microphone might result in a registration of e.g. 65 (half, every other measure).

Is there a way to keep the envelope-follower ARP-frequency in the neighborhood of the predefined/registered BPM in the setting, and as such just adjusting live to the performed fluctuations? And if not, can a new software-update take in consideration that an adjustment of the deviations of the predefined BPM will be no more then let's say 10%? In the above sample it would be just a multiplication by 2.

In general, the quality of the synchronization when you set clock SYNC = A/D INPUT, is going to be directly affected by the rhythmic quality of that source. If the drummer is just triggering tempo with a kick drum, creating a 65bpm pulse you would use the "unit multiply" feature to double time that pulse as reference. You will need to experiment to find out if this will work in your situation.

Perhaps a different approach to implement an external conductor into your band situation is what you need. Using a known steady source is ideal (obviously) feed it to the drummer's monitor and to the input of the Montage. It will act as the rock steady conductor.

Is there a way to keep the envelope-follower ARP-frequency in the neighborhood of the predefined/registered BPM in the setting, and as such just adjusting live to the performed fluctuations? And if not, can a new software-update take in consideration that an adjustment of the deviations of the predefined BPM will be no more then let's say 10%? In the above sample it would be just a multiplication by 2.

There already is an algorithm at work that takes into account the fluctuations in BPM of a live input. It will constantly monitor fluctuations, looking for the establishment of new tempo. Frankly, it does a better job than you would attempting to fine tune this with a parameter.

You're going on stage, you want to use sequences, arpeggios, motion sequences in sync with the band, I recommend first, a good monitoring system, set it up so that everyone hears the clock source reference. Or at least a source that the drummer hears, and is fed to the A/D Input on Montage, that will guarantee success.

See Yamaha demo at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRlgglsj7i0

It works great on MP3 files.

When using live-input from the drummer, I had to put in a compressor on the mike-signal before feeding it to the Montage in order to get rid of all distracting noises, whoozing and trembling, that disturbed the envelope follower.

I've tried with a pulse wave played on my analog synth (not a rhythmic pattern) witch is connected on the A/D input on my Montage and it works really great.

When I modulated the pulse from the mod wheel on my analog synth, that 's change the frequency of the modulation (like a tempo)and the Montage follow this variation with accuracy.

Even when I lowered the attack from the Enveloppe Generator, (that's minimize the dynamic of the pulse wave) Montage detect the pulse variation as well.

Can anyone suggest the best placement/microphone type for me to sync my Montage to my band's drummer? I tried clipping a pickup mic to the kick drum and it essentially did nothing. There are a number of songs my band plays where we've needed the drummer to follow the speed of my programmed arpeggios, but one of the selling points for me on the Montage was that (in theory), I could instead follow him. Human error being what it is, this seemed like a great solution to the fact that he's not a robot. So if there is a good placement for one or two microphones (one on the kick and one on the snare? A single one taped or clipped to the high hat?), I'd really appreciate the advice.

Can anyone suggest the best placement/microphone type for me to sync my Montage to my band's drummer? I tried clipping a pickup mic to the kick drum and it essentially did nothing. There are a number of songs my band plays where we've needed the drummer to follow the speed of my programmed arpeggios, but one of the selling points for me on the Montage was that (in theory), I could instead follow him. Human error being what it is, this seemed like a great solution to the fact that he's not a robot. So if there is a good placement for one or two microphones (one on the kick and one on the snare? A single one taped or clipped to the high hat?), I'd really appreciate the advice.

You mention that the drummer is needed to follow the speed of your programmed Arpeggios, and this is absolutely true... but you conclude that due to "human error being what it is" this is not always ideal, well, there is an important advantage the human drummer has in this need, they can listen and adjust because they have an ear and a brain.

I just want to put that into perspective for you before you attempt to substitute a microphone for the human ear, and a chip's analysis for the human brain. As you can see in the YouTube demonstration, they (the band) are feeding a simple Kick drum mic (a dynamic mic) and the drummer is providing a straight four on the floor... the more microphones you introduce, the more references you provide the mic/chip combination for analysis of tempo, and potentially the more difficult it is to maintain tempo for the player... mileage will vary!

Since it is not really an ear-and-brain, please anticipate that it is just sending loudness peaks as tempo spikes... the simpler the pulse provided, the better the tempo will lock in.

If you want a *foolproof* setup, you might want to analyze your band situation and come up with "the best", most practical solution. Many bands count on the drummer for tempo... the drummer is the de facto "conductor" for the band.

Enter some Clock driven technology... be it a Sequencer, an Arpeggiator, a clocked effect or LFO, that you need to introduce into the music... what many bands do is make the drummer responsible to follow an automated click... this is the quick, easy (and in my opinion, worst) solution. Here's why: It allows everyone else in the band off the hook. Off the hook in that they don't have to adjust what they normally do... they can still just rely on the drummer. And so it is that when a tempo disaster happens (and it will) everyone can just blame the drummer. "Hey, the drummer must have screwed up!" The fact that everyone can blame the drummer let's them off the hook...

In reality, the click is the de facto "conductor". By making the drummer the one person responsible is a bad strategy (imho). Try to picture an entire symphony orchestra- they normally follow the person with the baton, the actual Conductor - but now imagine that only the first violinist could actually see the conductor - and everyone else had to follow the first violinist. Well, you know that won't work... and so neither does just the drummer hearing the click.

The ideal situation would be a situation where all the musicians can "see" the "conductor".
In the case of electronics, it would be a situation where all the musicians can hear the conductor (the tempo driven phrases)

So the perfect solution would be one where the automated tempo (clock) is available for all musicians to hear. This way you have the combined talent of all the ears and brains in the band working in concert (pun intended) to adjust their performance to tempo.

There are several (many) ways to accomplish delivering Clock tempo to your band members.
You can use the Montage as this Clock source...
You can use an external device as the clock source... and distribute it to control all other clocked devices
Let's rank the accuracy of each possible source:
The Montage as Clock source will be extremely accurate, requires distributing an audio source via a monitoring system so all band members can hear and follow the "conductor" tempo.
The Montage can output a click or you can assign a specific conductor pulse (ARP or percussive pattern) to go OUT to the Asgn Outputs in the back panel... deliver this to your monitoring system.

The Montage can Slave to external Clock.
This can be either via the usual MIDI In, or as we are getting to here in this discussion, via audio pulse signal coming in the A/D Input jack.
The Clock source via MIDI In will, again, be extremely accurate and stable, while the human factor arises when you ask *what* the drummer is playing to conduct the tempo. The thing about a "click" as tempo, it is steady and no syncopation variations to confuse the issue. The Live drummer may easily "fool" the technology. Certainly, it will impact how they approach playing!

Remember something that is analyzing audio pulses to generate Tempo, does so by measuring the distance between audio pulses... it needs, at minimum, 3 hits to determine a tempo. Try using tap tempo to see, hear, feel how this works. The first tap doesn't set a tempo, a second hit alerts it to detect... but not until it gets the third pulse can it now "know" the distance from first to second and second to third, to issue a tempo setting value ... once you use your brain to figure out what the Auto Beat Sync feature is doing, you are better able to understand what will and what will not work as your audio tempo source.

If you don't, you'll simply never get it work, at all.

And you best give your drummer time to "figure" this out as well. You can see how easy it would be to confuse any automatic beat detection circuit, particularly if you have NO IDEA what it is attempting to do with your input. The better the INPUT data, the better the OUTPUT results... say you start the groove with just the Kick drum playing on beats 1 and 3, for the first 8 measures, then you add the Snare drum on the backbeats, 2 and 4 starting at Measure 9... the Auto Beat Sync would probably analyze and decide to double the tempo.

While your ear-brain easily determines the "backbeat" and that the tempo is the same just subdivided differently, the mic-chip cannot figure that... it is just recognizing twice as many pulses in the same amount of time.... and may conclude: New tempo.

Forgive the over simplified example, the actual Auto Beat Sync feature has a very sophisticated algorithm that has been taught certain tendencies that assist it in the analysis of what is the average tempo at any moment, but this is what is basically in play. I suggest you work with your band to find the best way to introduce Automated tempo into your situation. If you approach it from "the best" situation (everyone can see the person with the baton) to the "most difficult" to pull off (only one of the musicians can see the conductor) you'll find your best solution.

If you just want to put all the burden on the drummer, just be certain that they want that responsibility and get a chance to experiment with the range of what they can do and still provide the input to the "conductor" role.

A good monitor system is absolutely essential when it comes to adding automated tempos to a live band situation. To attempt it without everyone being able to hear, is, well, in my opinion, the worst, most difficult situation.

Thank you for your response!

The drummer and I actually worked on it this week. About 75% of the time, the Montage followed him (though in 2 cases, I had to set the rhythm to 50%). We basically used 2 microphones, one clipped to the kick drum and the other sitting on the floor facing the kick, but closer to the snare and hi-hat. So we're gonna try it live tonight, with the understanding that I might quickly have to turn off the A/D input and set the tempo myself.

I mean, we're never going to have the whole band listening to click tracks. a) Out of the 100 songs in our repertoire, I only use the arpeggiator for 4 of them. The others, we just all play in time, the way a band usually does. b) The Montage's reported ability to set the tempo based on an outside source was one of the big selling points for me. Sometimes the band can't hear the keyboard over the sound of the drums and their own amps. Again, for 4 songs, purchasing a full in-ear monitoring setup seems cost prohibitive and overly complicated. If we all had in-ear monitors already, that would be one thing, but we're a bar band and have no pretensions to be anything more.

With that said, one other question - can the tempo be set separately for each sound (or each arpeggiator)? It seems as though whenever I hit the tempo indicator at the top of the screen, I'm setting some sort of universal metronome for the whole keyboard. Is tempo one of the parameters I can set when I'm creating a performance? For example, the arpeggio in Kim Wilde's "Kids in America" is about twice as fast as on Blondie's "Call Me." As I mentioned earlier, what we've been doing is having me play a few notes of the rhythm so the drummer gets in his head how fast the arp is before the song starts. But as I also mentioned, he might speed up or slow down a little each way throughout the song. That's why the Auto Beat Sync was such a wonderful idea. Otherwise, I could have bought any keyboard with a click out. I could have kept my old Roland, if that were the solution.

But what I'm asking is - let's say we can never get the Auto Beat Sync to work and decide to do it the old fashioned way - can I set the tempo differently for each performance I create?

When you switch from performance to performance - you'll notice the tempo (upper right of touchscreen) move around. Tempo can be saved in a performance.

To change the tempo, you know to go to [PERFORMANCE] (HOME) , then [UTILITY], then "Tempo Settings", then change the tempo either manually or through tapping. You could have also touched the tempo icon at the upper-right of the screen to get here or, more simply, pressed [SHIFT] + [ENTER].

Experimentally, create some new throw-away performance based off of anything - a preset, another user performance. Note the tempo of this performance. Just load up the performance you'll be basing the throw-away on and press [STORE] and save as some new name like "Tempo Test".

For me, I started with "CFX + FM EP" and [STORE]'d this as "tempo test".

The tempo is 90. Now I just want to see if I can save a different one.

[SHIFT]+[ENTER] then I touch the "Tempo" box to highlight this (set at 90) and spin the DATA DIAL until the tempo is 122. Chosen just to be different than most other tempos and the starting value.

Then I press [STORE] again - name the new performance "tempo test 2"

"tempo test 2" recalls as a tempo of 122 and "tempo test" recalls as a tempo of 90.

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On your half-time problem. All things which use tempo (ARPs, LFOs, Motion Sequence, etc) do not run directly off of tempo. You have the ability to scale tempo by different values - faster or slower (double or half time - and more choices). Are you able to use this feature to get the correct "feel" (half/double/etc) vs. what the keyboard "thinks" the time is? The key here is "unit multiply". When you set it to 100% this means play at the clock speed (usually master tempo - although clock can come from other places - although most of those other places end up changing the master tempo). If you set the unit multiplier to 50% - then the ARP will play twice as fast (double time). If you set the unit multiplier to 200% then the ARP will play twice as slow (half time).

There are lots of places where this unit multiplier idea shows up - but you can go into each PART and set the unit multiplier for the ARP under the PART's "Arpeggio" -> "Common" menu. The parameter is labeled "Unit".

Here's an extra tip - you'll notice there are lots of percentages to choose from - I covered what 50% and 200% - so you can figure out what the rest will do - but the one labeled "Common" may not be easy to figure out what it does. The one labeled "Common" may seem to just be the same as 100%. It is not. It only seems that way because your global-level (not PART level) aka "common" level unit multiplier is probably itself set at 100% - so you will not tell any difference. Any PART you set to "Common" instead of a fixed percentage will be slave to the "common" setting which is set elsewhere. This will allow for you to use a knob to adjust any PART or PARTs that you assign to the "Common" unit multiplier - since there's a knob that's attached to the Common unit multiplier. There are knobs attached to the PART unit multipliers too - but the "Common" one has the ability to change multiple parts at once.

To set the "Common" unit multiplier - there are likely more ways than one to get to this - but you can press [PERFORMANCE] (HOME) to get you into a "Common" control mode. Then press the [ARP/MS] button (over by the far upper-left corner of all buttons on the keyboard). Spin Knob 2 (the knobs that are sometimes assignable knobs - now they are ARP/MS knobs. And generically Called Knob 1 - Knob 8). On the touchscreen you'll see something labeled as "Unit" change value when you rotate Knob 2 (Clock Unit Multiply - shortened to "Unit"). Any of the PARTs which have their PART ARP Unit Multiply set to "Common" will use this "Common" setting. You may not want real-time control (to change it on the fly with a knob, meaning back and forth) - but it may be easier to slave the PARTs to Common then set the Common unit multiply in one stroke (200% for half time). And say the Beat Sync recognizes half-time sometimes and sometimes not -- you could use the knob to adjust the "feel" so your ARPs come out right. Hopefully it just always recognizes double-time so you can to 200% and forget it.

Scenes can come to the rescue (because knob fiddling can get surgical) - Scenes can store unit multiply at the common level. So you can have one scene button set to 50% (your main scene button - usual one used) and your backup button set to 100%. Then I would certainly slave the PARTs to "Common" (instead of using a percentage) so that they can be set by the Scene.

The capabilities and control of what you can do go beyond just Auto Beat Sync. There's more under the hood that can help manage the result of the Beat Sync and, after some careful programming, will be fairly elegant to navigate on the bandstand.

Actually, that's what I was using - the Unit Multiplier. The mic setup we've hit on seems to be reading my drummer as playing in half-time. So I set the Unit to 50% and it seemed to do the trick. And thanks for the Scene idea. That hadn't occurred to me. The same basic levels, but one set to 100% and one to 50% would absolutely make me feel more secure with the Auto Beat Sync.

That said, we played out twice this week and I'd say it worked about 90% of the time - occasionally the tempo would jump up, but then would quickly right itself. I don't think anyone in the crowd (or even in the band) noticed.

The advice is much appreciated. I'm seriously loving this keyboard.

Okay, new question - I'm currently working on a simple (well, relatively simple) performance made up of a jingle bell sound that I trigger with a single key and it plays a really simple rhythm pattern I created over which I'd like to play piano (we're doing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"). When I hit the key, the bells will play forever, which is what I want, but the minute I start playing the piano sound, they cut out. Obviously, there's a way to keep a drum pattern/arpeggio playing one sound while playing over it with a second sound.

My process was essentially to take a piano sound on part 1 and add an "init drum" sound on part 2, to which I assigned a jingle bell and an arpeggio I created (originally for "Kids in America"). I fooled around a little with the looping and turned hold on indefinitely. I can't see why pressing another key stops the bells from playing. Any idea what setting I might have wrong?

Adam wrote:

Okay, new question - I'm currently working on a simple (well, relatively simple) performance made up of a jingle bell sound that I trigger with a single key and it plays a really simple rhythm pattern I created over which I'd like to play piano (we're doing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"). When I hit the key, the bells will play forever, which is what I want, but the minute I start playing the piano sound, they cut out. Obviously, there's a way to keep a drum pattern/arpeggio playing one sound while playing over it with a second sound.

My process was essentially to take a piano sound on part 1 and add an "init drum" sound on part 2, to which I assigned a jingle bell and an arpeggio I created (originally for "Kids in America"). I fooled around a little with the looping and turned hold on indefinitely. I can't see why pressing another key stops the bells from playing. Any idea what setting I might have wrong?

I'm having trouble understanding how you are triggering the "jingle bell" sound, which I'm going to assume is a .wav that you assigned as a New Waveform in a Drum Kit Part. My confusion comes in at the point you are triggering the audio... you mention Arpeggio, but not that you assigned this task to an Arpeggiator..

If you did, arpeggio loop, therefore there is no need to have the Amplitude Envelope of the sound to be set to HOLD. Only one method to make it play forever is necessary. If the audio in the Waveform is set to HOLD and set to looping Trigger note, if it is in Multi trigger mode, each new note on will start play of another instance of the audio...

Anyway, I'm not at all clear on the nature of the "jingle bell" .wav... so it's impossible to say why it stops (at this point)
is it a short wave that needs to loop?
Is it a 6 minute recording of jingle bells?
Are you triggering it with an Arpeggio?

The answer to those questions will help know exactly what your doing and perhaps lend a clue as to why the audio stops...
Since it is a feature (to assign a Key to an "Alternate Group) this is where one Key in any Group can sound at a time... this is how the Mute Triangle stops the the Triangle, how the Closed and Pedal Hihats are able to stop the Open Hihat.

Only so many instances of the same Key's audio can be started. If the Key's Assign Mode = MULTI (as you would for a Crash cymbal that you want to hit twice and have each hit ring out) each hit will play. But if it is an audio clip, and the Key's Assign Mode = Single then it will have each successive hit replace the previous hit.
A Key Assigned to MULTI, and an Element AEG set to Hold is a bad combination... the same audio cannot be repeated multiple times indefinitely... there is a limit on how many times (instances) the audio of the same note can sound. You only need a single instance of the sound running... if the ARP phrase is looping ... I'm guessing because I don't know what the nature of the data in the ARP and I don’t understand what the "Kids in America" reference means .