Genos sound alike voices on MODX - Sand, software and sound

I love kicking back in the afternoon and playing some old classic tunes from the 60s and beyond. The Yamaha Genos™ is a great machine for producing backing tracks and for jamming against them.

I spent a fair amount of time selecting the appropriate instrument for each cover tune. Now, I’d like to play the MODX over the same backing tracks and perhaps keep the same voices.

Time to play “What’s that voice?”

The Yamaha arranger keyboards and synthesizers share a lot of the same sonic DNA. This is a theme that I’ve written about in earlier blog posts. Sometimes the arranger voice and the MODX Performance share the same name. Sometimes you need to find a sound-alike. And, as I’ve learned, sometimes I need to do some MODX programming to get what I want.

The table below is a quick, rough correspondence between my favorite Genos voices and a MODX Performance (or two, or three). In the case of multiple mappings, the preferred Performance is marked with a star (“*”).

    MODX Performance         Genos Voice
    -----------------------  -----------------------
    TC Clean Pick            SingleCoilClean
    Clean Ballad Pick        SingleCoilClean
    TC Clean Pick            VintageAmp (BRITISH LEGEND CLEAN)
    Dual Coil Slap Vel       Slapback (ROCKABILLY))
    Clean Fingers            50sVintagePure (MULTI FX OLDIES DELAY)
    Melodic Jazz             JazzGuitarClean
    Fat Oil Jazz AF1&2       JazzArtistGuitar
    Jazz Blues               JazzGuitarAmp (MULTI FX OLDIES DELAY)
    Jazz Guitar              JazzGuitarClean (JAZZ COMBO)
    Crunchy Guitar           MetalMaster
    Hard Drive               MetalMaster
    Hard Ramp                MetalMaster

    Tenox Max                Rock Sax
    SoftTenorSaxLegato       SmoothTenorSax
    Sweet Flute AF1          JazzFlute
    Concert Flute            OrchestralFlute
    Latin Flutist*           OrchestralFlute
    Oboe1 AF1                OrchestralOboe
    Oboe2*                   OrchestralOboe
    Clarinet 1 AF1           OrchestralClarinet
    OrchClarinet             BalladClarinet
    Flute & Clari            Clarinet&Flutes
    Bluz Distort             BluesHarp
    FM Accordion 1           JazzAccordian

    Dynamic Brass            DynamicBrass
    Mixed Sax Section        SaxSection
    FM JP Brass              80sSynthBrass
    Simple Saw Brass         80sSynthBrass
    Flugelhorn               Flugelhorn

    Soft Case                70sSuitcaseTrem (E-PIANO TREMOLO)
    Rd Old                   70sSuitcaseClean
    Contempo*                SuitcaseEP
    Hard Vintage             SuitcaseEP
    Wr Rock                  70sVintageEP

    Vibraphone               Vibraphone
    Vibes                    JazzVibes

    Soft RnB                 SoftR&B
    Singleline 1             WireLead
    SingleLine 2*            WireLead
    WindSynth                WireLead
    VeloMaster               VelocityMaster
    Bleep Lead AF2           BleepLead
    Detuned Vintage          DetunedVintage
    FM Syn Lead 2*           FusionLead
    Straight RB              FusionLead
    Saw Lead                 FusionLead
    Dynamic Mini             BrightMini
    Whistle                  Whistle
    Early Lead               Oxygen
    Saw Lead                 Oxygen

    Big Strings              ButterStrings
    Analog                   AnalogPad
    Dark Light               DarkFatSaw
    VP Soft                  VPSoft
    Feeling                  LightPad
    Dark Atmo Pad            NewAtmosphere
    Angel Eyes               DarkAngelPad
    NighttrainToMunich       NightMotion
    Gospel Hmm               Mmh, GospelVoices
    Boy Choir MW Xfade       GothicVox

    All Out None             AllBarsOutFast
    Fully                    AllBarsOutFast
    Bowed Bars CV            CurvedBars, UpsideDownSmile
    Draw Organ               BalladOrgan
    Whiter Bars              WhiterBars
    Jazz 2nd Perc + C3       RotarySwitch
    Vx Full Bars*            60sOrgan, Italian60sOrgan
    Clean                    60sOrgan
    1967 Keys                60sOrgan

Even when the name matches (e.g., Bleep Lead), you’ll find slight differences in programming. The basic sound is there, but maybe one implementation will open up the filter dynamically, or maybe it will have a longer portamento time. These differences are easy to iron out, if they’re important at all.

Occasionally, a Performance and its corresponding Genos voice responds differently due to Expanded Articulation vs. Super Articulation programming. Such differences are fundamental to the arranger or synthesizer design. I’ll just need to keep mental notes about what to do where when playing, that is, push an assignable function button or some other gesture. If a Super Articulation voice is based on a Mega Voice, then chances are good that one can find a way to get a similar result on MODX using Expanded Articulation (XA).

Of course, the Super Articulation 2 (Articulated Element Modeling) technology does not carry over to MODX (Montage). Super Articulation 2 (SArt2) stitches successive notes together, blending tone heads, tails and bodies in real time depending upon the playing gesture. SArt2 requires additional samples and computation which are not implemented in MODX (Montage).

Not so easy are a few of the electric guitar voices. Electric guitar tone depends heavily upon the DSP effect chain. The Genos VintageAmp voice is a good example. It’s a single coil guitar driving the British Legend Clean effect. I couldn’t find a MODX preset to match. However, I quickly cooked up a Performance starting with the TC Clean Pick Performance (a single coil Telecaster). It was a piece of cake to put the British Legend clean effect into the signal chain. Voila — a new sound-alike Performance!