cg1155

Sounds good to me . . . Bartender! One for the boys here . . .

[cracking knuckles] Ok here we go . . . First, save your current settings (everything!) to the smart media card in case you make a mistake and lose something you liked. Before starting hit the [utility] key and make sure that your board is set to "midi receive" = "omni" and "transmit" = "1". "sync" should = "midi". You will want to change this last one back for live playing (no sequencer). 1. Go into performance mode. 2. Make sure the master keyboard mode is on. 3. Select a performance you would like to work on. There is one performance already programmed for sequencing, I believe it is internal performance H-16. If you aren't going to use this one then I recommend that you use a blank one, to get a blank one erase one you don't like with the [job] key. 4. Hit the [edit] key and make sure you are in the "common" edit menu by turning knob A all the way to the left. Scroll down with the page knob until you get to the "mode" edit window and set the mode to "4-zone". Also, farther down, you can set the part that gets the insert effects, Look for the "Eff Part" menu and set the channel there to the channel of the voice you want to have the insert effects. 5. Set all the voices to the ones you want to use by hitting buttons [1] to [16], or you can select the voices by scrolling through the channels with knob A. Each button brings up the voice edit screen for that channel. If you scroll down in each voice edit screen you will be able to set the voice and change parameters. One of these is the "layer" parameter. Set this to "off" for all voices. 6. Hit the [A] key. This will bring up the edit screen for Zone A, one of the 4 zones you can use. We're only sequencing one part at a time here so we won't use the other three zones. By default they're inactive so don't worry about them. As far as this one, set the midi channel to whichever voice you're working on at the time. Turn the "TG" setting to "off" and the "midi" setting to "on". 7. Save the performance with these settings by hitting [job], select the destination memory slot (where you will store your performance) and hit [yes]. If you use one of the preset performances you will need to store it into the user memory since you can't overwrite the internal performances. 8. You should be ready to go! Just record into your sequencer one part at a time. When you finish one part and are ready to move on to the next one set the midi channel in Zone A to the new part and you're ready to get to work on the next track. You might find the S80 manual easier to understand. Take a look at: http://www.yamaha.com/menuitems/manuals/dmi/S80.pdf -Casey

On the CS6x layer and split are two of three different performance modes (of course you can also construct layers and splits in voice mode but it's more difficult). I recommended the third mode - 4 zone - because you can enable just one of the 4 zones making it the transmit channel. This zone is the entire keyboard (unless you set it to some other key range) so you don't have to set two parts of a split to one voice/channel for example, although that would work. One of the problems in this OS is that it's pretty powerful as far as controller functions go but the manual sucks! -Casey

No, you can still play with the same sound all over, this mode just gives more midi options that can be useful when sequencing. -Casey

Like Rod said, you can't send on 16 channels at once, but you could send on 4 or so! Anyway, here's the setup I use to sequence a song while listening to the parts I've already sequenced. I start with a 4 zone performance in master keyboard mode. In the master Utility mode I set Midi receive channels to "omni" so all the channels are received, and transmit to channel 1. In the 4 zone performance edit menus, hit the "A" key to edit zone 1. Set it to Midi = "on" and and TG = "off". This separates the CS's tone generator from the keyboard, so pressing a key isn't sent on to the tone generator, instead it goes out on midi 1 (or you can set it to some other channel in the Zone 1 menu) to your sequencer. Make sure that the "layer" command for parts 1-16) is set to "off". Now depending on the sequencer you may have to set the send channel to the receive channel (1-16) that you are working on at the moment (eg. working on moog on voice 2, set Zone 1 send channel to 2). Then, as you work, just hit record on whichever channel you are sequencing on and make sure your zone is sending on that channel, and start playing, the software will send the midi back on that channel and the board will make noise! Now something that you'll notice is that some voices don't have the depth/effects they had in voice mode. This is because performances have their own 5 band EQ settings that affect the sound in Perf mode, and only 1 voice can have insert effects in Perf mode (yeah, it's the thing everybody hates about this synth, Why Yammy, Why?). To get around this I set the insert effects to whichever part I'm working on at the moment in the "Common" menu of the performance, and then record the audio of each part in voice mode when the sequence is finished. -Casey

S80 owner here, let me see if I can help . . . To do multi-part sequencing (ie. more than one sound at a time) you need to be in performance mode. Once there you need to set it to master keyboard mode and make sure that all the parts' layers are set to "off". Now make sure that Zone A is set to the midi channel you want to record on (eg. if you are recording the music for part one which is receiving on midi channel 1 you would want zone a to be set on midi channel 1). That sets up the synth to send midi out on channel one, receive that back after it goes through the comp, and route it to part 1 of the performance. There are other ways to do this, one of the things that makes the CS6X and S80 great, but this is the way I usually do it. -Casey

I guess the full moon tonight is making us all friendly so I'll join up. I am a medical student at the Penn State College of Medicine and I've been playing oof and on in bands for about 10 years. Currently I'm using a Yamaha S80 as my main ax and a technics KN1000 as a controller for synth action. Not much going on right now with school so I'm looking to get into doing some songwriting and recording at home. -Casey