When will Yamaha Sack its Entire UI Staff?

[Bill H.]

1 hour ago, marino said:

 

Hey, it's not just the American customers. The multi-stage envelopes in my TG77 have level values and rate values on separate pages. I guess that has something to do with the fact that I have never bought a Yamaha instruments after that.

I know, that's ancient, but judging from the Motif XF that I use at school, they haven't improved much in more recent years.

Archaic rate based envelopes that don't update in real time (early 1980s tech) is why I stopped buying Yamaha years ago. Did they ever bring their envelopes up to today's standards? It's been at least 10 years since I rolled up my sleeves and dug into one. 

[drawback]

4 minutes ago, Franz Schiller said:

I've been curious about their CK and CP keyboards since they seem to be simplified.

I really, really like the CK for front-panel control. I think the whole UI division at Yamaha should take a lesson from the team who designed this one, and perhaps they have. Now, if someone would just fix the absolutely confounding Yamaha web portal and IdeaScale.

[EscapeRocks]

wow....

so I gave the answer several posts back.

Now that we have more info, it's not a MODX issue.

 

Anyway, there are several ways to do what you desire for controlling B3X iOS from MODX

 

I do it with Moog's official Model D app.  by assigning a couple parameters to the regular knobs, then assigning those to the Superknob .

 

The answers are all out there, you just  need to slow down and do a little research.    What you initially complained about is not a UI issue.   It's a fairly deep dive on many hardware boards when it comes to assigning knobs and buttons to iOS music apps.

 

Sure, by using a proper interface my Arturia Keylab can directly send MIDI CC to y iPad or iPhone.     There is still menu diving setup work to be done on the app side.

[CyberGene]

I sign under everything that has been said in the first post. I loved my MODX for its sounds and portability but the UI as well as the convoluted and awkward concepts really put me off and I sold it.

 

Just an example that I always give: when you create a two-part split and enable arpeggio in one of the parts, you will hear that part when playing keys from the other part 🤣 And do you know why that is? Because some genius decided that note ranges for the parts don't determine what keys command that part, they determine what notes you hear from that part. In other words, every part receives every key, regardless of note ranges, however those notes that are outside the note ranges are silenced. However since an arpeggio goes outside the note range, you will be able to hear them 🤦🏻‍♂️ In order to avoid that, you have to open the arpeggio menu and set what keys can give input to the arpeggio... If you don't understand anything about what I said, don't worry, I didn't either. I am a senior software engineer and it took me quite some time to realize it's not a bug but is a feature and someone released it with a clear mind that's OK.

[Al Quinn]

I agree with the OP because I suffered through many terrible Yamaha UIs (DX7 and CP4 were particularly challenging/frustrating). But that all changed with the YC73 I bought a year ago. The UI is excellent!
 

IMHO Nord’s UI was so clearly superior Yamaha had to react and fortunately they did. I’m kind of surprised as I didn’t think they had it in them. Kudos to Yamaha!

[dazzjazz]

This goes as far back as their late 1980s sampler. I worked in a store at the time, and we sold 3 and all were returned as unfathomable. 
 

I love playing my CP4 but its UI is garbage and hurts your head to “get with it”. I remember when it was launched, their reps went to great lengths to tell us “there’s no such thing as a ‘factory preset’ in the CP4”. We all found out how wrong that was. I gave up trying to really understand it. It would be easier to figure out how they built the pyramids. 
 

Some parameters in the CP4 will display a value, but there’s no option to change it!
 

Having said all that, any time I’ve moved away from Yamaha pianos (either acoustic or digital), I’ve regretted it big time. 
 

but yes, their staff should be sacked. Is the CP88 better in this regard?

[Motif88]

hmm... I had the TX7, KX-88, Motif8, Motif ES8 and Motif XS8. I gave up on the UI/Menu structure a long time ago. It became problematic. Showing my age here but it was like DOS/Windoze vs Mac. 

 

Please no windoze fanboy comments, I don't care!

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, RABid said:

I used to wonder if it was Japanese mentality, and the UI seems perfectly logical to Japanese programmers.

 

You may be on to something. I asked a Japanese programmer about the kind of UIs being discussed here. He told me that Japanese people love puzzles, and doing them is a part of their culture. He saw the UIs as having some of that vibe - puzzles people enjoyed solving, so they could come up with their own paths to arrive at solutions to tasks. 

 

It seems he wasn't just pulling my leg. Here’s a citation and abstract from some actual research that might shed some light on the differences. The bottom line is the first sentence:

 

Trey Hedden, Sarah Ketay, Arthur Aron, Hazel Rose Markus, John D.E. Gabrieli (2008). Cultural Influences on Neural Substrates of Attentional Control.  Psychological Science 19 (1), 12–17. 

 

ABSTRACT—Behavioral research has shown that people from Western cultural contexts perform better on tasks emphasizing independent (absolute) dimensions than on tasks emphasizing interdependent (relative) dimensions, whereas the reverse is true for people from East Asian contexts. 

 

The interfaces on Japanese instruments do seem to be more about interdependent (relative) dimensions than absolute ones, which would explain why having envelope rate and level parameters on different pages doesn't seem odd.

 

Nerd alert for those interested in the methodology: 

 

We assessed functional magnetic resonance imaging responses during performance of simple visuospatial tasks in which participants made absolute judgments (ignoring visual context) or relative judgments (taking visual context into account). In each group, activation in frontal and parietal brain regions known to be associated with attentional control was greater during culturally nonpreferred judgments than during culturally preferred judgments. Also, within each group, activation differences in these regions correlated strongly with scores on questionnaires measuring individual differences in culture-typical identity. Thus, the cultural background of an individual and the degree to which the individual endorses cultural values moderate activation in brain networks engaged during even simple visual and attentional tasks.

[zephonic]

I always felt Yamaha synths were unintuitive, but the Montage/MODX UI is actually easy to get around on for me. I have only had to look at the manual twice. Then again, I don't really use Super Knob, nor the transpose function.

[David Emm]

I'm one of those who have found Yamaha's UIs so convoluted, its sent me elsewhere when I reached the point of making a serious buy. Creating music IS a puzzle, so if the Japanese like that added layer on it, no problem; I'm just more linear-minded. It helped nudge me towards Korg and Roland, whose UIs are fairly direct. Roland can be a brain teaser, but the hierarchy isn't impenetrable. Korg is a cakewalk. Its intriguing that the Big Three each took such a different direction.

 

I've laid hands to some jaw-droppers like the SY85, which I almost bought due to its being sample-based. That was a monster! I've never played a bad Yamaha piano, acoustic or digital. The SY35 had a sweet mix of FM and AWM, but the vector aspect escaped me at the time. Like anyone else, I tripped along behind my ears and took up what spoke to me best. If I hadn't gone with Korg, I would have been a Motif man. That's nearly a dream synth, soundwise. Ah, I love the First World, at least when it doesn't smell like a week-dead goldfish your kid threw under the couch.   

[EscapeRocks]

15 hours ago, zephonic said:

I always felt Yamaha synths were unintuitive, but the Montage/MODX UI is actually easy to get around on for me. I have only had to look at the manual twice. Then again, I don't really use Super Knob, nor the transpose function.

 

I use the Super Knob for some of the complex things I need to do.

 

Like you, though, I do not use transpose.    On anything where I may need to, I simply do it within a program.

[AnotherScott]

On 8/24/2023 at 6:43 PM, Anderton said:

On 8/24/2023 at 2:56 PM, RABid said:

I used to wonder if it was Japanese mentality, and the UI seems perfectly logical to Japanese programmers. 

 

You may be on to something. I asked a Japanese programmer about the kind of UIs being discussed here. He told me that Japanese people love puzzles, and doing them is a part of their culture. He saw the UIs as having some of that vibe - puzzles people enjoyed solving, so they could come up with their own paths to arrive at solutions to tasks. 

 

It seems he wasn't just pulling my leg. Here’s a citation and abstract from some actual research that might shed some light on the differences. The bottom line is the first sentence:

 

Trey Hedden, Sarah Ketay, Arthur Aron, Hazel Rose Markus, John D.E. Gabrieli (2008). Cultural Influences on Neural Substrates of Attentional Control.  Psychological Science 19 (1), 12–17. 

 

ABSTRACT—Behavioral research has shown that people from Western cultural contexts perform better on tasks emphasizing independent (absolute) dimensions than on tasks emphasizing interdependent (relative) dimensions, whereas the reverse is true for people from East Asian contexts. 

 

The interfaces on Japanese instruments do seem to be more about interdependent (relative) dimensions than absolute ones

 

Related, I remember reading about how a person's language can affect the way they think, and I've wondered if the Japanese language itself prompts them toward different ways of seeing things such that, again, the interface that seems unnecessarily convoluted to the western user makes perfect sense to them.

[ElmerJFudd]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

 

Related, I remember reading about how a person's language can affect the way they think, and I've wondered if the Japanese language itself prompts them toward different ways of seeing things such that, again, the interface that seems unnecessarily convoluted to the western user makes perfect sense to them.

Without a doubt there are cultural aspects (language included) to user interface design along with any design - mechanical, architectural, music, art, etc.  If an outsider finds aspects of these things strange, unique, less than obvious it can certainly be because they were born in a different culture.

 

We are all capable of learning another language (assuming that capacity isn’t limited by a preceding condition).   But truly understanding terms and expressions requires also learning things about the history and culture.  
 

UI can be similar. We are capable of figuring it out but it may take some time being steeped in it for it to stick to the grey matter, so to speak. 

[timwat]

On 8/24/2023 at 3:43 PM, Anderton said:

 

You may be on to something. I asked a Japanese programmer about the kind of UIs being discussed here. He told me that Japanese people love puzzles, and doing them is a part of their culture. He saw the UIs as having some of that vibe - puzzles people enjoyed solving, so they could come up with their own paths to arrive at solutions to tasks. 

 

 

I believe there is a great deal of insight here that American consumers may not intuitively warm to.

 

On the other hand, I might suggest Korg has done a decent job removing the puzzle-solving element from much of their UI offerings. This is not, of course, comprehensively true, as anyone who has tried to blow a usable sample into a Kronos can attest vs. using Nord's Sample Editor. 

 

But it seems to me Yamaha remains the notorious winner of perennially cryptic UI decisions, which I don't hear as often about Korg nor Roland. And all three, I am presuming, employ Japanese engineering to design their UIs?

[Stokely]

I'm the exact opposite, I've owned two Kurzweils and no matter how much time I spend with them, never got really comfy. 

I don't like keyboards with different modes for Single or Multi, I have found.  Even within Yamaha, my old Motif had that architecture while my Modx flattens it out (everything is a performance).   I don't find  the Modx particularly confusing.  In fact I've noted more than a few times when the navigation has surprised me in a positive way, it just makes sense.  Different strokes for different folks!  There's more functionality that I need for sure but that applies to any workstation.

Now that I'm using a Nord stage 3 alone at gigs though, that is my particular sweet spot for live gigging.   Always in the same "mode" (ok there is song mode which I have yet to use),  effects are simple and right there, no chains or limitation gotchas that pop up.  No weird stuff where a single patch suddenly sounds different in multi.  Sure, more limiting overall but I find the limitations work well for me.

[Dave Keys]

My Yamaha YC73  has a remarkably intuitive user interface in my opinion - particularly over the Nord Electro 5HP that it replaced. 

[AnotherScott]

Yes, the recent YC/CP/CK performance boards are a good new direction for Yamaha. And honestly, to me, even the MODX was a nice step up from its MOXF predecessor in the direction of greater simplicity, although not without its oddities. But it's taken them, like, 50 years. 😉

[time4jazz]

11 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

But it's taken them, like, 50 years.

Unfortunately, most companies, like most people, don’t change unless circumstances require it. Thank god for the innovators!