Quick question for Yamaha MX owners

[ashowofhands]

I've been toying with the idea of getting an MX49 as sort of a "cherry on top" for my gigging setup. Something that I can use for quick synth leads, string pads in the background, or playing bass without having to give up real estate on my main board to a split, etc.

 

I was able to try out an MX88 in Sam Ash the other day, and I wasn't able to figure out how to pull up a specific voice without having to use the scroll wheel or increase/decrease buttons. For example, if I wanted to switch from an EP patch that is number 002 in the EP bank, to a different EP patch that is number 024, there didn't seem to be a way to directly punch in 024, it seemed like I just had to scroll sequentially until I got there.

 

Is this possible? I couldn't really find a straight answer online, even video reviews don't seem to show anything helpful. But I'm mostly familiar with Korg and Roland so Yamaha's UI is a little bit foreign to me, so hopefully someone with experience can chime in.

 

I like the idea of this thing because it's small (for what I'll be using it for I won't really need more than 4 octaves), and basically costs throwaway money (I see used ones for under $400 all the time), but inability to call a specific patch on the fly is a dealbreaker. I'd rather spend more money and jump up to a 61-key of some sort than have to spend time twiddling the scroll wheel in between tunes.

[AnotherScott]

You can set it up so that the 16 buttons call up 16 sounds of your choice, no scrolling required.

[Dr88s]

You can also set them up as "performances" sequentially and switch from one to the next that way.

[AnotherScott]

...or two adjacent performances can give you quick access to your 32 favorite sounds.

[DenCV]

I have an MX61 for a lot of the same purposes you are looking for. One thing I noticed is the interface is not intuitive at all. Being an old timer used to flinging patch chords between songs I'm pretty decent at figuring out how to get what I want on keyboards, but that yamaha has left me at the mercy of the (poorly translated) instruction manual more times than I care to admit. It does have some real cool pads that are slightly programmable, but the programability is kind of limited to a few normal parameters (ADSR's on filter and volume,lfo's)parameters. Same with the leads. Not many choices for adjusting between osc. eaves, etc. But I usually can find something that fits. Acoustic instruments are where it shines for me. I use it mostly for brass, which it works great on in an r&B band. But it has a killer bassoon (I've played way more bassoon solo's than my band has cared to hear!) and english horn, as well as a lot of other ethnic and wind instruments that are cool. For the price you can't go wrong. But planning on spending some time on youtube tutorials. I can save a performance, but I still have to look at the instruction manual to save a part!

 

[AnotherScott]

Although front panel editing is very limited, a lot of the editing you'd want to do is available in the free vycromx editor (Mac/Windows). More in-depth editing if needed is available with the editor from John Melas.

 

As far as live performance patch selection, a useful enhancement was added in the 1.01 update:

 

- Added a "Performance Direct Select" function in which you can switch the Performance number directly by pressing the [sHIFT] button and the Voice Category button simultaneously in the Performance Select display. While this function is enabled, you can change the performance number simply by pressing the Voice Category button, without needing to press the [sHIFT] button.

[Philip Clark]

You can't direct dial, but you can use Shift plus the + or - to scroll in increments of 10. That makes is slightly easier to get around.

 

Upon boot, I always make sure to dial up my most likely used piano, EP, organ, string and brass right up. That way they're in memory when I have to switch. I supposed it would be easier to set up a performance like this, but I'm probably too lazy to do that.