Imagine working with 8 Arps!

The Montage lets you control as many as eight PARTS simultaneously. It is always in PERFORMANCE mode - a Performance can be used for several different things... but when we are talking about simultaneous play, you can control as many as eight. Some can be under your real time direct play control while other can be under control of an Arpeggiator as you may desire. You can record yourself interacting with a PERFORMANCE as MIDI (to the internal Performance Recorder) or as AUDIO (to a USB stick). And actually there are somethings that Montage does that can only be captured as AUDIO!

Whatever you record can then be dragged and dropped into your favorite DAW as .MID or .WAV file - where you can continue to add other tracks. Both types of recording can reference the Montage Clock so you can be guaranteed that it will slip perfectly into your DAW

There is only PERFORMANCE mode, and there is only ONE PERFORMANCE (at a time) - you can merge several Performances into one, but "...there can be only one!" The Montage allows you to address across several MIDI channel simultaneously!!!

The Montage is like having eight Motif XF's that you can play all at once... and you use a DAW software to build your composition further... The Montage is 16 PART multi-timbral - but its ability to route AUDIO OUTPUTS is unprecedented so RENDING to AUDIO is a definite part of the workflow. You get 32, count them 32 audio bus outputs. Any PART can be assigned to any bus output. Once you render your data as AUDIO you can then reutilize your hardware to continue to build unlimited tracks.

It is a powerful workflow, that if you came up on the MO (part of the Motif family) you already are familiar with - there is just more of it and the sonic quality is off the charts - off the charts. You can't say enough about the sound quality!

FYI: I transitioned from MO6 to Montage 7. All of my work has been live performance - so the recording/studio side is not my focus. Montage comes bundled with a fairly capable DAW which can be used to handle recording with less "gotchas" than the internal scratchpad-style recorder. If you decide to upgrade the DAW to a less "lite" version of the software - then you gain some features although the AI version seems to work fine for me. Certainly if you already work within another environment - Montage works well with those.

The lack of dedicated transport controls (like was more fully integrated into later version of "MO" and the previous Motif XF) is one "ding" for integration. Not all is lost - you just need to possibly purchase more hardware to supplement the loss in functionality if this is important to your workflow. I know "MO" got better in later versions - I'm not sure if the MO6 (ES time-frame) had that together or not since I didn't use a DAW at all when I was driving with the MO6. So this may be a wash.

I think the experience will be fairly rewarding with what can be done integrating with a DAW.

Just demoed a used 6 at guitar center and put down a deposit to pull it off the floor. Theres no Cubase, or warranty.. so till contemplating a new one. I think I will be able to get into the weeds on how to tweak the performances to work for how I like to jam... and explore... seemed pretty intuitive. My hunch is it will take some work to see what can be done for creating personal performances, scenes, live sets. Ill read up on the manual a lil... while I contemplate if 20% off for used is good enough... or I may just wait till I have the cash and buy new. There are some pretty nice bundles I see that through in the cables and pedals... let alone the cubase, and the warranty. Nice board on first glance.

Cubase Elements which is reported to be a "step up" from Cubase AI that ships with Montage is "only" $99. So if 20% savings exceeds $99 - then in terms of this consideration - you would be ahead. All documentation is online in PDF form. The warranty is something to consider although I have not seen huge fallout of Montages failing - so you should be doing OK. My experience is that GC has a 45-day return policy even for used gear. This is fairly liberal and allows for you to find out if there are any issues with the gear in a reasonable amount of time.

Bundles with cables and pedals are generally not better than finding the best deals on pedals/cables separately - but this is something for you to look at. You may or may not find that a new unit with the cables/pedals you are planning on purchasing arrives at a better deal going new/bundled vs. used and individually purchased. Another "nice" thing about buying the gear separately is that you can "grow as you go" and defer some of the accessory purchases until later (may or may not work for you). So money spread out over time may "hit" you differently than all at once.

Yeah only $99, and I just read the write up on how to set up the basics for multi track recordings of the performances. Thx for the feedback. Another consideration I had was that FM synth on top of the Wav sounds was very FMy...DXy. vs analogish... if that makes sense. But then reading up on motion controls, it seems that LFO, ADSR, filters, Sample/Hold, etc from say Mood and Arp can mostly be approximated... or duplicated. Not sure if there is actually any real difference?? Knowing a bit about how to navigate in Yamaha from using the MO6 tho... is pushing me in the Yamaha direction. Its like all those arps and sounds are old friends.

DXy vs analogish - YMMV.

YMMV?

Basically, what you get out of something may vary based on the person inputting the data... each person will have their own array of responses to different things. Your Mileage May Vary. It's a disclaimer that says one person's view of a particular feature might be that it is extremely important while to the next person it might not have the same value, or any value at all.

For example, building an Acoustic Piano Performance by "merging" it with a DrumKit Part that is using an Arpeggio ... where the drums are just there to give a "feel"... you might find this a compelling way to start constructing a composition. Knowing that you can erase the original drums and build a more elaborate drum part later, complete with fill-ins and breaks. Some use it as a metronome with feel.

You might build entire rhythm section merged into a single Montage Performance where you record yourself interacting with the Motion Engine, again recognizing, not only is the MIDI data split out to its own channel... so is the audio.... so you may develop a workflow that includes isolating just what you want. Another person might never consider that method of working... which is just fine...

Your mileage may vary, based on what you find a compelling feature for your particular workflow. Some folks find no interest in the Arpeggio content, they may not have a need for such things... their focus might be toward building Multi-dimensional sounds that use the multiple Parts entirely differently. Because you are playing across multiple MIDI channels in the way Montage does this, you can have Aftertouch, for example, only affect a particular layer or component of what you are playing; or have a single physical controller do completely different things to different Parts.

I've been seeing just how many things I can do with just three Parts, given the different places you can take each sound, it can sound like about ten or fifteen Parts are involved, but it is just three.