One of my favorite pastimes is finding and collecting patterns from vintage Yamaha beat boxes. It’s been a long time coming — the Yamaha AN200 Loop Factory.
The AN200 is renown for its 5-voice Analog Physical Modeling (AN) engine. Yamaha provided patterns to get you started and to show off the AN engine. The AN synth is accompanied by AWM rhythm, and sometimes, bass tones, too.
Yamaha AN200 — the OG
The AN200 has 256 factory preset patterns. That’s a mess o’stuff and capturing all 256 patterns is a daunting task. So, I recorded the 20+ patterns that hit me in the sweet spot (funk, downtempo, etc.)
AN200 track structure
Each AN200 factory preset pattern has four tracks:
- Synth: AN, MIDI channel 1
- Rhythm 1: AWM, MIDI channel 2
- Rhythm 2: AWM, MIDI channel 3
- Rhythm 3: AWM, MIDI channel 4
The first track drives the AN engine. Surprisingly, the outgoing MIDI data doesn’t have any MIDI Continuous Control (CC) messages. I guess the AN engine has enough free-running gizmos like its LFO to provide interesting dynamics. The lack of CC messages is a bit disappointing.
The three rhythm tracks drive an AWM engine. AWM synths typically provide a selection of voices and drum kits. The AN200 is different. The AWM rhythm tracks have one big drum kit which is a crazy amalgam of percussion instruments (kick, snare, etc.), found sounds, bass tones and synth waves. Each MIDI note hits its own drum instrument, bass tone, etc. just like a conventional drum kit. The AN200 manual has a list of the Rhythm Track Instruments — essential reading if you’re going to re-use these patterns!
Why “essential reading”? Sometimes a rhythm track is dedicated to a single instrument like kick, snare or bass tone. Quite often, though, a rhythm track pounds away on multiple instruments, e.g., 3 or 4 hi-hats, a second kick and a shaker top. It all works on the AN200 with its integrated rhythm instrument (“drum”) kit, but you will need to reassign these beats to a kit on your target instrument. On SEQTRAK, for example, you will want to assign individual instrument patterns to its seven percussion tracks (and/or sampler).
Busting apart an AN200 rhythm track is a lot like working with the DJX-II patterns. It is a lot of work, so be prepared to roll up your sleeves.
Hunting the snark
I captured the AN200 MIDI over 5-pin MIDI (no USB in the olden days) and SONAR Home Studio on a Windows 11 OmniDesk PC. [Yes, Cakewalk Home Studio from 2006.] I sync’ed the AN200 to SONAR’s MIDI clock:
AN200 -- set AN200 to external SYNC
1. Shift + SETUP (button 14)
2. Press multiple times to see "Clok"
3. Turn DATA knob to "Ext"
SONAR -- set SONAR to generate MIDI clock
1. Option > Project > Sync
2. Check send Start/Stop/Clock
I captured one AN200 factory pattern per SONAR project. Each SONAR project has four MIDI tracks, one track for each MIDI channel (1 to 4). By setting the MIDI input channel for each track, I could capture the entire pattern in one pass. SONAR’s input default is “OMNI”, so the individual track channels must be assigned explicitly in order to separate the MIDI channel streams into SONAR tracks.
After track set-up, arm RECORD on all four tracks and hit the red button. I captured a minimum of eight measures per AN200 pattern with a little slop over to ease looping (if that’s ever necessary).
Don’t get pitchy with me
Crack open a rhythm track and you’ll ask, “What are all of those NRPN messages?” Nearly every drum-ish note has an NRPN setting its pitch. 97% of the time, the pitch offset is zero (MIDI value: 8,192). A few AN200 patterns use the NRPN messages to slowly pitch up (or down) a percussion instrument like tabla. That’s how you get cool tribal sounds.
The Drum Instrument Pitch Control NRPN seems (is?) AN200-specific. You’ll probably want to zap them. I zapped the NRPNs from the patterns that I translated to SEQTRAK.
Why did Yamaha use the NRPNs? If there are multiple instruments in a single track (MIDI channel), you can’t use pitch bend because ALL of the instruments will be shifted in pitch. The NRPNs let Yamaha target specific notes (drum instruments). I just wish they had suppressed the non-essential NRPN messages; they clutter things up and waste message bandwidth.
Oprah time
So, what do we have for today’s guests? Here is a ZIP file with all of my work products: SONAR projects, MIDI Type 1 capture files, MP3 demos for each factory preset, and SEQTRAK projects. [More about the SEQTRAK projects in a future post.] My sweet spots are funk, tribal, and downtempo, so that is what you get.
Have fun and enjoy!
One final comment. I love the AN200 instrurment names and descriptions. I wish SEQTRAK names were just as descriptive instead of Kick 1, Kick 2, Kick 3, etc.
Copyright © 2026 Paul J. Drongowski
