Montage M - Is it Me?

[Motif88]

Having owned and played plenty of Yamaha gear going back to the KX-88, Motif 88, Motif ES8, Motif XS8, then a Korg Kronos, followed by a Roland RD-2000 and Software Synths to arrive back at a Montage M8x....Is it me?

 

Another "clear as mud" short video from the wizards at Yamaha. As much as I love my Montage M8x, the keyboard action, poly aftertouch, built in audio interface, new U/I and sub display, etc. It is stunning piece of gear sonically and build quality. Yet, the mechanics/interaction remind why I left my Motif, Motif EX and Motif XS for software synths long ago. It's about immediacy not some inter-dependent routing scheme for teutonic engineers. Maybe I'm a Nord guy and I don't know it.

 

Whaddya think?

 

 

"Our daughter Francine, will now play for you, the recorder"

[AnotherScott]

Super Knob seemed to me to be Yamaha's answer to Morph on a Nord. It is much more capable, but also much more complicated. As a result, I would use Morph on a Nord, but while I like the MODX quite a lot, I have never done anything with the Super Knob. I wish they had left off the knob (and any other "motion control" stuff) and given the MODX aftertouch instead.

[CyberGene]

Reminds me of my first (and last) encounter with the MODX a few years ago. Great sounds. Inhumane logic. 

[jazzpiano88]

Every time I turn on my Montage, it takes me 20 minutes of fumbling on how to call up my user patches.  I go through 10-15 minutes profuse sweating that I've lost them in my last firmware upgrade,

 

The UI makes Zero sense to me despite it being a sonic beast!.    UI's like this are why Chernobyl occurred.   "You failed to realize that disconnecting the control of part two's oscillator's filter envelope was being used by part 4 -- happily humming away generating uranium for Vladivostok and it went critical!   We're producing music AND refining weapons material here!"

 

Doing a Backup, Firmware upgrade, and Restore is like doing a days worth of tax filing researching the new IRS rules for inherited IRA RMDs for minors. 

 

Still I have GAS for the new M8x because it's the most killer HW instrument doubling as an HP signal generator.

 

 

[Justin Havu]

47 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:

Every time I turn on my Montage, it takes me 20 minutes of fumbling on how to call up my user patches.  I go through 10-15 minutes profuse sweating that I've lost them in my last firmware upgrade,

 

My MODX-7 is set to power up in Live Set mode, User bank 1, where all of my favorite/most-used patches reside.

[UnderGroundGr]

All that morph and big knob things made by a Kurzweil K2000 back in 1991 with VAST and a slider...😉

[ProfD]

9 hours ago, Motif88 said:

It's about immediacy not some inter-dependent routing scheme for teutonic engineers. Maybe I'm a Nord guy and I don't know it.

 

Whaddya think?

The 1st question is does the M8x or Nord have the better FTEC (finger to ear connection) from a player perspective.

 

The M8x is cheaper than a Nord especially if it's just a matter of pulling up presets and creating splits and layers.

 

The M8x also has more sound design possibilities if/when there's a desire to deep dive into its less than immediate features.

 

IMO, Nord provides the most immediate experience from a player perspective and real-time sound designer simultaneously.

 

The higher price of the Nord can be rationalized when considering that it's three (3) tactile KBs in one box.

 

For most KB players, I believe a combination of digital piano and poly synth provides the best of all worlds (sounds, features and functionality).

 

A digital piano and synth combo could cost less than a M8x or Nord.

 

It really depends on the KB players' needs at this point in playing their music and the current state of technology (new and used).

 

That may have just become as convoluted as the Yamaha interface and routing scheme.😁😎

[cphollis]

I've sat down at one a few times.  It's an impressive piece of engineering to be sure.  There's a LOT I could do with it.

 

But how many players have bonded with their Yamaha Montage?  Apparently, not many. 

 

It's a very respected keyboard (obviously) but I don't see a lot of passion towards them.  Maybe that will come in time.

 

Nord owners tend to get pretty passionate about their boards, myself included. 

 

I was in love with the NS3C, and then upgraded.  My GAS is in extended remission as a result.

[Sean M. H.]

5 hours ago, UnderGroundGr said:

All that morph and big knob things made by a Kurzweil K2000 back in 1991 with VAST and a slider...😉

 

 

That was my first thought when I saw the first teaser videos about the superknob years ago..."cool, but I'm pretty sure Kurzweils have been capable of that for a long time"... not to say it isn't a great feature, or that Yamaha's implementation is better or worse--just interesting how much they hyped it, as if it was something unheard of.

[HammondDave]

I still cannot figure out how to assign effects to the stupid superknob. In fact, the bling effect of the pulsating superknob was the very first thing I turned off when I bought the MODX+. 

[Stokely]

It would certainly be overkill for me, as like you I use soft synths (at home).   I have absolutely no desire to ever work with a multitimbral device in a studio environment ever again, even if the screens are bigger than they used to be     Live, I've used workstations simply for their ability to do splits and layers and have a nice all-round selection of sounds.   Never have used the sequencers, the arps just once (for one song) and only rarely have imported any samples.  The music I do just doesn't really call for it, like say modern pop might.

Now, I'm using a Nord Stage 3 compact in a single keyboard rig which might be just a tad too far the other way to the simplicity side (there are a few songs where I'd like more than two synth sounds for example) but overall it's a much closer fit for what I need live.

Simply put, I wouldn't use the M8X at home other than as the world's most expensive controller (action is great).  I'd use it live except it's too big and heavy.   I've always gotten on pretty well with the Yamaha OSes for some reason, going back to my Motif.   I may consider the 6 or 7 but as I've said before if I buy another keyboard I want one with Poly AT so Yamaha kind of did a swing and a miss there for me.




 

[EscapeRocks]

3 hours ago, HammondDave said:

I still cannot figure out how to assign effects to the stupid superknob. In fact, the bling effect of the pulsating superknob was the very first thing I turned off when I bought the MODX+. 

It's actually quite simple.

 

The thing about the Montage/MODX is that the deep diving is meant to be done BEFORE you take it out to gigs.

 

I personally love the Superknob and all that it lets me do without taking my hands off the keys.

 

[Bobadohshe]

10 hours ago, cphollis said:

But how many players have bonded with their Yamaha Montage?  Apparently, not many. 

 

 

I love mine but only because it works great for my particular cover band situation.

[Motif88]

I originated this thread...I do love so many things about the M8x versus my RD-2000 and soft synths and the vast improvement over my Kronos, and 3 previous Motif series boards. Maybe I'm just getting old...

 

Seems odd that the only real Montage M video tutorials are French or German. I might have to buy a Nord Stage 4 (before I can't) to see if it gets me back to a greater joy. 

[David Emm]

I think the issue could be summed up by something I heard a short while ago. The statement was that Japanese people are highly fond of puzzles, which shows quite clearly in X number of hardware synth GUIs. Far more people than not see a synth as another piece of consumer tech, whose job is to make fun noises. Those of us who are serious, furrowed-brow keyboard players take a more serious view of it.

 

That's not to say that any given approach is "bad." Variety has several pluses. Some softsynths are breezy and some are Dr. Frankenstein peyote nightmares. There are synths for oscillator-heads and synths for neo-pianists who like synth sounds. That respected, IMO, Yamaha is the most inscrutable, whereas Roland is convoluted but more consistent & ultimately comprehensible. Korg gets the golden spaghetti squash for being the alphanumeric champs. I've always preferred the company's overall sound, but their UIs are the least abbreviated. Its easier to keep track of what you're doing.

 

The Montage will see its due as a solid pro instrument and a few folks will make part of their living programming it for pros. Yamaha's instruments have always been full and crisp. Still, the MODX line seems a lot more pragmatic. The full Montage is partly a case of a synth that's peacockin'. 🦚 

[nursers]

23 minutes ago, David Emm said:

Still, the MODX line seems a lot more pragmatic. The full Montage is partly a case of a synth that's peacockin'. 🦚 

 

Couldn't agree more - I don't struggle with the MODX at all, can find my way around most things no problems at all. Agree on the Super Knob though - I essentially don't use it....

[DeltaJockey]

I'm probably not going to add too much of value here, as much as I'm an M8x owner, I don't tend to dive too much into the programming, though I agree the latest and first gen Montage have had the most difficult interfaces to learn of any keyboard I've had. I blame that on the totally orthogonal way Yamaha approach their terminology and programming flow compared to anyone else. I have to confess, I was only interested in the M8x primarily for the new action, so sadly I almost put myself into the category of having the most expensive keyboard controller, though it's the DAC's also that I was attracted to.

Having said all that, I have enough Montage libraries to keep me going for quite some time, and I do seem to be able somehow work out what I need to do, programming wise to get the results I need, but rather than sit down and try to work out the whole programming structure initially, I attack it one problem at a time as I need a particular function.

I too, feel I'm getting to an age where I'm a bit past having to strain the brain, so just sit back and often mindlessly tweak things without thinking too hard.

 

The discussion reminds me of many instances over the years, and the holy grail of a powerful synth with an easy operating system. I remember when the Roland FA0x's first came out, and they made a big fanfare about how the interface was much easier to use than the previous Fantoms. I remember it being pretty immediate to get to the parameters you wanted. Though disappointed they didn't have a touch screen.

 

The discussion here brings to mind an interview with Edgar Froese in the 80's about musicians and tech. TD by this stage didn't do a lot of sound design themselves apparently, and employed tech sound designers to fully understand a new synth, summarise it for the band members, and spend endless days creating new patches for the band to peruse and select what they wanted.

 

Perhaps the Montage is for musicians with tech engineers to support them 😀

[ProfD]

1 hour ago, Motif88 said:

I do love so many things about the M8x versus my RD-2000...

Not to relitigate the case, er, rehash the decision to replace the RD-2000 but it might be a good exercise to list the M8x gains other than familiarity with the Yamaha sound.😎

[Synthaholic]

As an aside, looking at the specs for the Montage M (since I'm totally unfamiliar with it's capabilities), the sequencer lists a maximum of 128 songs. That can't be right, can it?

[Mighty Motif Max]

1 hour ago, Synthaholic said:

As an aside, looking at the specs for the Montage M (since I'm totally unfamiliar with it's capabilities), the sequencer lists a maximum of 128 songs. That can't be right, can it?

The Motif XF with its full sequencer had a max of 64 songs, and another 64 patterns if you used that mode. So I wouldn’t be surprised…

 

The nice thing is that the Montage doesn’t require you to use songs to have multitimbral setups, unlike the Motif (Mixing mode was how you got up to 16 sounds available). That 64-count limit was a pain then.

[mauriziodececco]

15 hours ago, EscapeRocks said:

 

The thing about the Montage/MODX is that the deep diving is meant to be done BEFORE you take it out to gigs.

 

 

Exactly the conclusion I arrived to after using the MODX for a couple of years in electronic and jazz improvisation based setup. 

 

Not being actually able to do any unplanned adjustment in the rehearsal/gig setup ruled out its use in the electronic experimental project; extra financial given by the sale of an OB-6 allowed to switch to a Nord Wave 2 (discussed already in another thread). In this context, I fully use the NW2 interface to tweak the sound while playing; usually I ends up with a very different patch at the end of each piece. Nice way to generate new presets that will be tweaked next time.

 

I continued to use it for my jazz/funk setup, but even if the sound were great (Purgatory Creek Rhodes), and the live tweaking a bit less fundamental (but still important), it was the key bed that I really couldn't adjust to, even after two years. I was happier with the NW2 keyed, so I finally decided I really am a Nord guy, and switched back to a Nord Electro 6D 61, just a bit heavier (and financially affordable with the sale of the MODX, probably we are lucky in Europe).

 

Of course, this is just me, and my specific set of projects and workflows.

 

For studio work, while I liked the MODX sound, I largely prefer a computer only workflow, at least for digital sound sources.

 

Maurizio

[Sunlight2]

I still love my MODX (first iteration) and have found the Superknob extremely useful - however IIRC you have to first link whatever parameters you want to change to one of  the four 'assignable knobs', and then assign the Superknob itself TO that knob, for it to work. So yeah, it's a couple of steps removed and not all that intuitive. 

[CyberGene]

Superknob is just a macro: a single control that changes multiple parameters at a time with different depth. But Yamaha of course had to make it non-intuitive, so that’s it’s scary. Has to do something with Japanese culture, samurai, bushido, harakiri, seppuku and the likes…

[AnotherScott]

 

On 3/7/2024 at 12:34 PM, EscapeRocks said:

I personally love the Superknob and all that it lets me do without taking my hands off the keys.

 

...which means you're not even using the knob, you're using the pedal assignment, right? You do lose one feature of the knob that way... the knob is endless, whereas with the pedal, I suppose there is the issue of what position the pedal happened to be in before you start.

 

22 hours ago, DeltaJockey said:

I agree the latest and first gen Montage have had the most difficult interfaces to learn of any keyboard I've had. I blame that on the totally orthogonal way Yamaha approach their terminology and programming flow compared to anyone else.

 

To me, that has always been the "extra" Yamaha obstacle... terminology. Not just that they use their own words for things (which other companies often do as well), but they also tend to choose words that are already widely used to mean something else. e.g....

 

...what other companies may have called a tone, patch, or a program, Yamaha called a voice. The problem for me there was that "voice" already had another common meaning, i.e. a unit of polyphony (e.g. a 16-voice synth was one that could play up to 16 notes at a time).

...Yamaha used the word "waveform" to mean something different from what the word typically meant everywhere else... though in other places, they also use it the way everyone else does (when talking about LFO and FM for example... which also yields the odd result that an AWM2 Waveform is something that, itself, contains a collection of waveforms).

...what other companies called split/layered combinations of the basic sounds (e.g. combi, setup, multi, registration, etc.), Yamaha often called a Performance. All those other terms made sense to me, the words inherently implied some combination of multiple sounds/settings. But to me, a Performance would not be a bunch of keyboard settings, but rather what I created in real-time as the player (or, arguably, what the computer created when commanded to play a sequence). To me, nothing about the word related to its function. Okay, performance was something you used it for, but not what it was.

...and then if you wanted the sounds of the sound combination put on different MIDI channels, that was called... I think a Mixing? (But I think you had to be in Song or Pattern mode for that one... even if you had no interest in creating sequenced songs or patterns).

...and a "shortcut" to a voice or performance or mixing was called a Master. Master what? Master should be an adjective!

 

...and while it was common for other companies to use the word "zone" to mean some region of keys, for Yamaha, it was specifically a region of keys applied only to an external sound, but not an internal one. 

 

...and while "transpose" typically means to change the pitch of a note, Yamaha used it only to refer to the MIDI number of the note. Sometimes the audible result is the same... but sometimes it is not. (In Yamahaspeak, if you want to change the pitch of a note but not its MIDI note value, that parameter is called Note Shift.)

So it's not just that you have to learn Yamaha's words for things, but you have to be sure NOT to use the terms you're used to using for some of these things, because they now mean something else! Things have gotten better on some more recent boards, but I don't think any other brand's terminology has ever thrown me as much as Yamaha's. 

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

I love my MODX for gigs as a do-it all (well, other than organs, though the Organimation patches work in a pinch). However, it's absolutely something that you don't tweak on the go much. I've gotten reasonably good at building Performances fairly quickly on the fly, but that's for more general things like patches, splits/layers, levels, some basic Scene settings (levels and parts on/off), reverb sends, controller filtering, and eq's. Anything further isn't going to happen in that environment. For actually dialing in stuff while playing, my Fantom 7 is superior in many regards (mainly because you can see more stuff for different parts simultaneously). However, for actually creating patches when I have time, the MODX is easier to use than the Fantom for me. But it's nowhere near as quick. That's why I actually (heresy alert) programmed a synth lead on my SKpro 73 for one of the songs in our set...it was way faster to get a patch that was in the ballpark using that, even though it's literally a monosynth added on to a clonewheel.

[CyberGene]

Yamaha also use “job” for stuff that is commonly called Utils/Tools on other keyboards.

 

On my Fuji camera they use the term “order” not as a noun e.g. “the order of pictures” but as the slightly awkward verb “order the camera to move these photos” 😀

 

Yeah, I’m not a native speaker and I certainly use funny words and bad English but how come a big corporation doesn’t hire somebody to use proper English terminology? 🧐

[TJ Cornish]

I have had my Montage M since November and have gotten fairly deep in it. The sound quality is stunning - far above anything else I’ve owned previously, and the raw power is incredible. It is a “more is more” instrument though, and if you are not willing to put “more” effort into learning it, you won’t be able to take advantage of the “more” that it has compared to other options out there.

 

It feels great to play, and once dialed, it is a dream. I trip on arpeggiators (can’t figure out how to create a reliable toggle where pressing a key starts the arp and then pressing a different key stops it other than a weird bug/feature where if you assign a key on the zone that’s out of the range of the playable notes it’s still running but playing notes you can’t hear), I hate the hierarchy of patterns vs. performances (I try to do simple things like click tracks with tempos, but as you can’t assign a pattern to a performance (other than a hack in Live Mode), you have to essentially create a pattern for each performance, which then becomes the parent object, and as was pointed out above, the limited number of patterns being 128 is very limiting.

 

Griping aside, after putting “more” time in, I have worked around nearly all of my frustration, and have had some luck using the super knob to morph things as well as cool stuff with scenes. It also doesn’t have some of the functional limitations that other boards have (e.g., limited effects/polyphony/lesser sound quality of Fantom, limited effects and combi slots of Kronos, complications of Kurzweil VAST).

 

I do think it’s interesting that this thread talks about deficiencies of the M, however the M is a VASTLY better board than the original Montage. I didn’t own a Montage (the board never made sense to me in a pre-sales world and I was happy with my Kronos), but if the M is as challenging as people seem to think, the original must have been quite the disappointment.

 

I’m not sorry I bought it, but unfortunately I’m not hopeful that Yamaha will do much to fix the things that I and pretty much everyone else trip over. The IdeaScale website is disappointing - lots of good ideas there and very little ever seems to get implemented. In the past, Roland and Korg have done a better job reacting to user feedback via firmware updates; Yamaha seems to save some of that for new models.

[DeltaJockey]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

Yamaha used the word "waveform" to mean something different from what the word typically meant everywhere else...

I agree. Originally starting my career as a communications engineer, a waveform is just that! Not negotiable.

 

Subjectively, If I examine the way my mind works, I feel that Korg have the most traditional and logical style of work flow, with Roland a close second. I haven't owned a Kurzweil since the late 80's when I had a K1000, so am less conversant with their recent offerings. My sense, perhaps in ignorance, and being provocative, is that much of Yamaha's distorted terminology has been borne from when it developed it's FM synthesis. Maybe they had designs on shifting the axis of influence to them in the synth world. I remember seeing a V50 in the shop, (didn't have access to a DX7), and it's structure seemed to be so foreign compared to the Korg's and Rolands I was familiar with.

 

Agree, they have improved.

32 minutes ago, TJ Cornish said:

however the M is a VASTLY better board than the original Montage

Having owned an original Montage8 and then upgrading to the M8x, I'm not convinced it is VASTLY superior. I suppose it depends on what aspects you are talking about, but so far I rate the original Montage overall to be at least 75% relative to the M.

[TJ Cornish]

12 minutes ago, DeltaJockey said:

Agree, they have improved.

Having owned an original Montage8 and then upgrading to the M8x, I'm not convinced it is VASTLY superior. I suppose it depends on what aspects you are talking about, but so far I rate the original Montage overall to be at least 75% relative to the M.

I have not owned an original so this is second-hand information, but the extra elements per voice that make the primary piano not take up four slots (that would be a dealbreaker for me right there), the extra screen that tells you what the heck the knobs are doing, the improved UI, and the unlocked extra polyphony which I use regularly, don’t seem like small upgrades to me. I’m not a huge PAT user so that’s not a big difference maker, but I know others like it.

 

My point was that if the M is still considered inscrutable with the Navigation screen and various UI simplifications, that doesn’t say a lot for the operability of the original.

[David Emm]

On 3/7/2024 at 6:02 PM, DeltaJockey said:

The discussion here brings to mind an interview with Edgar Froese in the 80's about musicians and tech. TD by this stage didn't do a lot of sound design themselves apparently, and employed tech sound designers to fully understand a new synth, summarise it for the band members, and spend endless days creating new patches for the band to peruse and select what they wanted.

 

I wish I could un-read that. I wanted to continue laboring under the illusion that the band was an endless fount of godly sound design on the fly. 🤨🤓

 

That's a lot of where I've wound up. Its an ongoing clash between fascination with new synths containing 100+ patch libraries and trying to be something akin to an adult about it. That's where you adhere to a moratorium on new gear while you explore that gluttonous pile of 'em you already possess. I set aside days where I mainly reverse-engineer a few of the standouts from various instruments. They're often so good, I feel little need to build from scratch. The flip side of it is learning how to modify things with greater ease n' precision.

 

That includes a preset that made my toes tingle, but after half an hour of noodling, I realized that it was so big, it would step on anything using it. When I tried trimming it, the magic fell apart. You know how that goes...