Category Archives: MODX

Floobydust: September 2024

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Floobydust from the the music tech world…

Arturia AstroLab update

Arturia Astrolab got a major update to version 1.3. The update adds several engines: Avid V (Roland TB-303 emulation), MiniFreak V, Augmented Brass and Augmented Woodwinds. The Mini V (Moog Minimoog emulation) and Wurli V have remodeled engines, consistent with V Collection X. There are 200 presets for the new engines with 90 new “tribute” presets thrown in for good measure. Of course, there are bug fixes and such.

Analog Lab integration got a boost. Astrolab owners now get a permanent upgrade offer to V Collection and Pigments. You need Analog Lab for detailed editing and the new upgrade offer takes the sting out of purchasing V Collection.

Personally, I’m glad to see Augmented Brass and Augmented Woodwinds. I took the plunge for Arturia’s Augmented Collection and still haven’t plumbed its depths.

Arturia AstroLab Update 1.3 playthrough video

Roli October 8

Roli have been announcing and teasing. They have rolled (pun intended) LUMI into the ROLI brand. Probably should have been that way from the start…

LUMI Keys is now called “ROLI Piano M”. As usual, one can expect to see a single unified website for all Roli products.

Roli are teasing a major announcement for October 8. All the usual hype about “there’s music in everyone,” “free the music”, “game changing” and a bunch of Gen [whatever} types reacting to a demo. The words “sleek design” and “talk to it” stand out from the videos. Who knows?

“We changed the piano. What’s next changes everything.
Join the list to be the first to know about the next wave of musical innovation for creators and learners, coming October 2024.” [Roli]

Two screen grabs above caught my attention.

ROLI, what is this?

I don’t know of any existing Roli product that looks like it. Maybe a stand or frame for snapping and holding your Roli modules together/ An integrated synth and speaker? I could really use one of them because I can’t take my Lumi Keys and Lightpad M out of the studio. Magnets alone aren’t good enough for gigging.

I’m happy to see Roli innovating, again, and not just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Ableton October 8

Well, well, October 8th will be a busy day. Ableton are teasing “Move” for October 8. Ableton’s European trademark (application number 018907095) will be used in the following businesses:

  • Musical instruments, in particular electronic musical instruments; Sound effect devices as musical instruments
  • Computer hardware for music and sound production
  • Digital controllers for musical instruments in the form of audio interfaces
  • Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) controllers
  • Equipment for creating and editing music and sound, namely music sequencers
  • Music and sound samplers; bags for computers

The USPTO approved wordmark “Ableton Move” for publication on September 28, 2024 (serial number 98104829). The U.S. trademark is coming kind of late thanks to the USPTO diddling with the description of businesses. I kid you not — lawyers get paid to play with this nonsense. 🙂 [The new descriptions are mere swizzles.]

Yamaha Synth 50th Anniversary

Yamaha USA have published a special content site Yamaha Synth 50th Anniversary. You’ll find chronologies and Yamaha synth history.

It’s worth reading through the history sections as you’ll learn new interesting tidbits about synth — and stage piano — development. There are eight chapters although chapter 7 is labeled “Coming soon.” I noticed that the chapter about recent history mentions the stage CP pianos, but not the stage YC organs. No mention of Montage M, AN-X or Virtual Circuit Modeling (VCM), either. Hmmm?

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski

Yamaha stage keyboards: What’s next?

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Lately, I’ve been contemplating the future of the Yamaha Stage keyboard line: the YC organ and CP digital piano. Both keyboard lines are mature; the CPs were released in January 2019 and the YCs were launched a year later in January 2020. Both models have received updates (including new voices). The latest updates, however, feel like “life extension” updates while new models are in the latter stages of development.

Does it make sense to merge the two product lines and reduce the number of SKUs? That would be a bit of challenge for Yamaha as organ-focus and piano-focus are defining features for the YC and CP, repsectively. In terms of sound, the updates have brought both lines closer together even though the front panels and user interface remain distinct. The YC got a lot of additional AP and EP voices bringing it into CP territory.

Then there is the “CK effect.” The CK is an all-rounder with drawbars, CP-like front panel controls and a set of secondary sounds which, frankly, leave both YC and CP wanting. So, given CK, it should be possible to merge the two stage keyboard product lines. Right?

These thoughts prompted me to take a look under the hood of both YC and CP. Gigantic, purpose-built front panels aside, YC and CP are brother and sister as far as digital electronics are concerned. There are a few differences on the analog side such as CP’s balanced XLR outputs. Of course, the keybeds are different, too, in keeping with organ-, EP- and AP-focus.

Yamaha Stage CP block diagram (click to enlarge)

Let’s tour stage CP first. The primary digital components are:

  • Yamaha SWX09 CPU and DSP (248MHz internal clock)
  • Yamaha SWP70 tone generator (191.9232MHz internal clock)

The SWX09 integrates an ARM Cortex host processor, an unspecified DSP core, and a raft of external interfaces. SWX09 also contains an AWM2-compatible tone generator and effects/mixing section. In stage CP, the wave ROM, wave RAM and DSP RAM interfaces are unused. Board real estate is wired for DSP SDRAM; the board position is unpopulated.

Without SWX DSP RAM, the CP models cannot implement Virtual Resonance Modeling (VRM).

The SWX09 is a mainstay in the Yamaha CLP digital piano line. The SWX09 is the primary workhorse component in the CLP-685 and P-515 digital pianos, for example. The P-515 and CLP-685 each have 256MBytes of wave ROM which should give us a rough idea of the size of the CFX and Bösendorfer waveforms (samples). [The CLP and P-515 EPs are relatively old and probably aren’t very big in comparison.]

We see the SWP70 tone generator throughout Yamaha’s many product lines, so it’s not surprising to see it in the stage CP, too. The CP has 2GBytes of NAND flash waveform memory. Its SWP70 has DSP RAM and wave RAM. DSP RAM supports effect processing and Wave RAM caches in-flight (most recently used) waveform samples. The SWP70 has its own unpopulated DSP RAM position, labelled “For future model”.

Yamaha Stage YC block diagram (click to enlarge)

Not to leave anyone in suspense, the future model is YC. The YC SWX09 gets DSP SDRAM and the SWP70 gets its second DSP RAM channel filled. The CP is mainly a sample-playback engine while YC implements a Virtual Circuit Modeling organ engine in addition to sample-playback. I’m guessing that the SWX09 DSP hosts the all-important rotary speaker effect.

The YC’s waveform memory is the same capacity as CP: 2GBytes total waveform NAND flash. 2GBytes may seem gargantuan versus P-515’s 256MBytes. Pianos are memory hogs and with all of the updates, those 2GByte waveform memories may be full up (or close to capacity).

It will be interesting to see where Yamaha takes the Mark II stage keyboards. Here’s a few thoughts.

The CK61/CK88 gave Yamaha valuable experience with integration of organ, piano and other sampled voices. They have a lot of available content (voices, waveforms) and software IP (organ and rotary speaker simulation, AWM2, FM, VRM). If they combine their experience with existing technology, they could issue three models:

  • 61 Semi-weighted waterfall keys (organ focus)
  • 73 BHS weighted keys (EP focus)
  • 88 GEX piano-action keys (AP focus)

Unifying the YC and CP designs into one reduces the number of separate SKUs from five to three and increases economy through scale.

There’s a lot of competitive pressure to produce an all-in-one stage keyboard. Nord (Clavia) have not been sitting on their hands and the Nord Stage (4) marches on! Yamaha’s own Montage M series shows the way, packing all-rounder functionality into a single keyboard.

As to new technology, announcements for the CLP-800 series Clavinova pianos are touting “a new tone generator chip with increased computational power” and imply that the new TG chip enables enhanced Virtual Resonance Modeling. An SWX10, perhaps? I’d like to see both VRM and VCM organ technology in the same package.

      
                 Physical
    Keyboard   Waveform Mem  Expansion mem
    ---------  ------------  -------------
    CLP-685      256 MBytes
    P-515        256 MBytes
    PSR-SX900      2 GBytes     1 GByte
    PSR-SX700      1 GByte    400 MBytes
    DGX-670      512 MBytes
    CSP-170        1 GByte

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski

SampleRobot, again

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Sampling pipe organ with 1010Music’s tangerine renewed my interest in SampleRobot. I figured, what the heck, lets use SampleRobot to capture Yamaha CSP-170 pipe organ voices.

Cabling

The CSP-170 digital piano is located downstairs from my studio. I don’t have a laptop at hand, so, I had to string long MIDI and audio cables between the CSP-170 and the Yamaha AG06 connected to my personal computer (Windows 10). I put a small Rolls mini-mixer in the middle of the audio cables in order to prevent signal loss. Similarly, I put a trusty old MX MIDI Patchbay in the MIDI path, again to prevent signal loss.

SampleRobot’s set-up wizard really streamlines the configuration process. Choose the sample rate (44.1kHz, 16-bit), key interval (every third note), MIDI channel and a few other things. After a few minor glitches, I could see signal in SampleRobot’s peak meter. All seemed operational. Hit record.

Mistake number one — I should have monitored and checked the sound across the full range of keys.

Uh-oh

Well, I couldn’t leave cables strung through the house without causing major grief for my spouse.

Mistake number two — I tore down the cabling before reviewing the samples.

I exported MODX Performances (in Montage library format X7L) and loaded them into the MODX6. That’s when I noticed a buzziness, especially in the lower octaves. Totally unacceptable.

The buzz is not electrical noise, but probably due to the Rolls mini-mixer being slightly overdriven. That’s my guess, anyway. I didn’t feel like stringing cable again, so…

Tangerine to the rescue

Toss the samples captured with SampleRobot. Copy and rename the tangerine sample files (to reflect the key names) and import the tangerine samples into SampleRobot. Export new MODX libraries and test.

Everything sounded good except that I noticed one sample file much shorter than the others. Whoops! Looks like tangerine had failed to collect and write a full eight seconds for one of the lower notes (D#1). Instead of re-sampling the note, I substituted a similar sample from one of the Genos pipe organs. Amazingly, I couldn’t hear a difference playing across the notes! That’s a lucky win in my book.

Although Montage/MODX can probably handle 48kHz samples — I wish Yamaha was specific about this in their documentation — I decided to down-sample to 44.1kHz, 16-bit. SampleRobot handled down-sampling with aplomb.

Gotta mention a couple of fails. I tried auto-looping the tangerine samples with SampleRobot and got too many short and/or lumpy loops. Cross-fade looping was not helping, either. I chose to go ahead without loops as an eight second sampling time is enough for most musical situations (e.g., a note held for two measures at 60BPM, worst case).

Better or just different?

The tangerine samples and Performances sound pretty good on MODX. A/B’ed against my existing pipe organ voices, however, the new pipe organ voices are just OK. There isn’t a “Wow, that is sooooooo much better” sound.

I’m going to leave the samples unlooped rather than invest more time with little return. If I had my socks knocked off, I would feel differently. Those Genos pipe organs are pretty darned good and I’m going to stick with what I’ve got.

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski

First gig: 1010Music tangerine

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Thought I would pass along a few quick comments about gigging with the 1010Music tangerine. I got the urge to use tangerine at my church gig last Sunday. Gotta start sometime, somewhere.

First step on Saturday, I played through Sunday’s music and chose the most appropriate voice for each tune. I wasn’t entirely happy with the woodwind voices, unfortunately. So, I quickly sampled three of my favorite woodwind patches from Yamaha MODX. Thanks to all of my recent experience with tangerine and sampling, I had three new voices ready to go in half-an-hour. It pays to know one’s tools thoroughly!

The next step was pulling together all of the pieces and parts: an Arturia Keylab Essential 49 MIDI controller, the tangerine, a Boss FV30L volume pedal, cables and power adapters. With some spares and charts thrown in, I wondered, “Am I really saving any weight?” 🙂 Keylab Essential plus tangerine in less weight than MODX6, but all those accessories add up fast.

Load-in and set-up went well. No issues. I perched tangerine in the upper right corner of the Keylab. The cables thread through the knobs and sliders to the back — not the most tidy arrangement, but it works. The Keylab Essential is a Mk2 and does not have an expression pedal input. Thus, I routed audio into the Boss FV-30L pedal before hitting my amplifier in MONO. Signal strength was very good.

Sound-wise, the gig was successful. I’m glad that I took the half-hour needed to capture three of my go-to voices. The pipe organ sounds seemed a little wimpy and need boosting. Thank goodness tangerine offers gain individually for each preset.

Performance-wise, the main drawback is tangerine’s small screen. I cannot change voices on the fly as easily as the MODX6 touch screen. tangerine requires careful aim. So much care, that you must avoid hitting one of the eight on-screen trigger pads, each of which play a sample. I learned this lesson the hard way, accidentally triggering a note while selecting a preset voice. Ooops, all eyes on the clumsy keyboardist making noise at an inappropriate time during the service. After that, I minimized the volume pedal after every tune and before selecting a different preset.

Overall, I would rate this first gig experience as a success. I spent Monday sampling a half-dozen classic patches from Roland XV-5050. As I said before, once you’ve been working with tangerine, you can really fly with it.

I renamed and reorganized my presets into “categories.” Woodwind preset names begin with “0”, then “2” for strings, “3” for horns/brass, “4” for pads, “5” for organs, and so on. Once the organization settles down and is final, I will try tangerine’s MIDI program change feature. I will then be able to select a preset from the Keylab Essential over MIDI.

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski

MODX EP umph!

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This short post is for MODX/Montage people looking for a little more electric piano (EP) “umph”.

I haven’t been all that happy with the factory stock suitcase and “Rd” patches. They seem to be lacking guts. So, I turned to the Genos 70s Suitcase Ballad voice for inspiration. Here are the EQ and effect settings:

Genos voice: 70sSuitcaseBallad

    EQ Low    -4/64  = -0.75dB @ 200Hz
    EQ High   +16/64 = +3.00dB @ 2.0kHz

Reverb: Real Medium Hall +  (MODX/Montage: HD HALL)

    1 Reverb Time          1.7s
    3 Initial Delay Time   22.1ms
    4 High Damp Frequency  8.0kHz
    6 High Ratio           0.8
    13 EQ Low Frequency    800Hz
    14 EQ Low Gain         +6dB
    15 EQ High Frequency   1.0kHz
    16 EQ High Gain        +4dB
       Return Level        64

Insert: Chorus 2  (MODX/Montage: SPX CHORUS)

    1 LFO Frequency        0.34Hz
    2 LFO Depth            29
    3 Feedback Level       0
    4 Delay Offset         0.0ms
    6 EQ Low Frequency     500Hz
    7 EQ Low Gain          0.0dB
    8 EQ High Frequency    7.0kHz
    9 EQ High Gain         +2dB
    10 Dry/Wet             D63>W
    11 EQ Mid Frequency    2.0kHz
    12 EQ Mid Gain         +4dB
    13 EQ Mid Width        1.0
    15 Input Mode          Stereo

The 70s Suitcase Ballad voice has the guts and warmth that I’m looking for. Always steal from the best! I plugged these effect and EQ values into the stock Case 73 Soft Performance.

Yamaha’s signal flow introduces equalization at multiple levels. This makes it difficult to suss or judge the overall EQ curve. However, these settings appear to add a significant bump in the 800Hz to 2.0kHz range. The reverb stage, in particular, has an major effect.

The chorus effect gives a nice shimmer after tweaking. It replaces auto-pan in the original factory patch. I adjusted the chorus dry/wet mix to D16>W in order to get a deeper/richer chorus.

Have fun!

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski

A smorgasbord of electric pianos

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I’m well into the process of sampling Genos/CSP electric pianos using 1010Music tangerine. I’ll have more to say about the process of sampling the EPs in a later post. Today’s blog is laden with enough detail about EP velocity levels to make your eyes roll. Suffice to say, one needs to know where the levels are in the source material before choosing exact velocities for sampling.

There are so many Genos EP voices that I produced a short list of my favorites:

  Genos/PSR/CSP electric pianos

  Voice            MSB/LSB/PC1 Velocity ranges
  ---------------- ----------- --------------------------------------
  Magnetics          104/0/5   1-75  76-104  105-115 116-127
  Electric Piano 1   0/119/5   1-75  76-106  106-127
  Electric Piano 2   0/122/5   1-60  61- 81   82-112 113-127
  SmoothTine         0/119/6   1-70  71-100  101-127
  SuitcaseSoft       104/7/5   1-46  47- 75   76- 99 100-118  119-127
  SuitcaseWarmth     104/14/5  1-46  47- 75   76- 99 100-118  119-127

I like the warm bell-like character of Magnetics. This voice have been around for ages — Tyros 4! Still, oldies can be goodies. Electric Piano 2 is unique to the CSP/CLP instruments and has a nice, unaggressive character.

I decided to sample: Magnetics, Electric Piano 2, and SuitcaseSoft. Those three voices give me a big enough spectrum of tone colors. I determined source voice velocity ranges by sending fixed velocity values to Genos/CSP and listening for velocity steps. I verified the velocity ranges against UVF meta-data when possible.

For comparison’s sake, I took a brief look at a few MODX voices to identify the waveforms in use (and typical velocity ranges). Here’s a mini-dump:

    MODX/Motif electric pianos

    Performance      Wave
    ---------------- ----
    Vintage 74        EP1  3 levels: Soft, Med, Hard
    R&B Soft          EP3  4 levels: Soft1, Soft2, Hard1, Hard2
    Early 70s         EP1  
    Soft Case         EP3  
    Crunchy Comp      EP3
    Vintage Case      EP3
    Hard Vintage      EP1
    Sweetness         EP1
    Case 75 Amp       EP4  5 levels: p, mp, mf, f, ff
    Dyno Chorus Rd    EP2  4 levels: Soft1, Soft2, Hard1, Hard2
    Dyno Straight MW  EP2
    E.Piano 1         EP3

After A/B testing, MODX EP4 is the same multi-sample as the Genos Suitcase, that is, comparing “Case 75 Amp” versus “SuitcaseSoft” with all effects and EQ turned off. Yamaha added the EP4 waveforms with Montage along with the new, detailed “Rd” and “Wr” multi-samples. Yamaha probably captured EP4 during the long gap between Motif XF and Montage, then tossed it into Montage along with the other new electric piano waveforms.

I also like the MODX Performance “Case 73 Soft”. It uses the newer Rhodes 73 waveforms:

    Part 1                  Part 2
    ----------------------  -------------------------
    Rd73 p         1 -  49  Rd KeyNoise p     1 -  84
    Rd73 mp       50 -  85  Rd KeyNoise mf   85 - 116
    Rd73 mf       86 - 108  Rd KeyNoise f   117 - 127
    Rd73 f       109 - 119  Rd KeyOff mf    Keyoff
    Rd73 ff      120 - 127  Rd KeyOff f     Keyoff
    Rd73 KeyOff  Keyoff     EP2 Soft1+      Keyoff
    Rd73 KeyOff  Keyoff     EP2 Hard1+      Keyoff
    EP2 Hard1+   Keyoff     Rd Soft Keyoff  Keyoff

Yamaha paid far more attention to mechanical noises in Montage/MODX. I’m in the process of punching up this Performance. [Yet another small distractions er, project.]

After a number of “lessons learned”, sampling EPs has progressed well. More to come about the actual process later.

For more about 1010Music tangerine, please see:

Check out my article about Yamaha piano voice programming.

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski

Patents: GEX, InfiniQ, DX7

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I apologize for not posting recently. I expended way too much energy on Yamaha Montage M. Don’t get me wrong, Montage M is a worthy subject and I gave it careful consideration as an 88-key piano solution for home. In the end, I decided to venture into Clavinova-land and have ordered a CSP-170. [That’s another story for another day.]

Gotta build energy for the GENOS2 launch in two weeks (November 15). 🙂

GEX keybed technology

I posted this short fresh take on the GEX keyboard technology at the Keyboard Corner forum. After learning more about the EM induction sensor approach, I felt the need to clarify.

The optical shutter sensing system is used in the older AvantGrand and SilentPiano instruments. The “Non-contact continuous detection electromagnetic induction sensor” is the latest Yamaha tech and will be delivered in the newer AvantGrand and SilentPiano models. GEX is derived from the EM induction sensor approach.

I’m still searching for information, but a recent Yamaha patent describes such a key articulation system. The key side has one or two coils of wire. The substrate (PCB) side has similar opposing coils. The circuitry senses flux direction, etc. on a key-by-key basis.

U.S. Patent 11,657,790 B2, Operation detection device for key operation of keyboard device, Kenichi NISHIDA, Harumichi HOTTA, Jun ISHII, May 23, 2023.

Yamaha’s latest patent is interesting because they want to measure “yaw” and “roll”, not just vertical “strike” distance. Couple this with their recent key/note articulation patents and you’ve got an “MPE” keyboard!

Quite possibly, they were not able to finish the keybed design and set up the manufacturing for these advanced designs. Thus, the m6 and m7 got FSX (for now). The Montage M team were probably ordered to “deliver or die in October 2023” by the suits. Concessions were made to meet schedule.

Sonuus InfiniQ position sensor

While investigating the GEX technology, I found the U.S. patent for the Sonuus InfiniQ position sensor. Sonuus deploy the InfiniQ sensor in their Voluum analogue effects pedal. The InfiniQ is based on electromagnetic induction, avoiding the usual potentiometer approach and its disadvantages.

U.S. Patent 8,933,314 B2, Musical effects devices, James Hastings Clark, Morag E. Clark, John M. McAuliffe, January 13, 2015.

I recommend reading the Sonuus patent because it is well-written — real English instead of the patent-ese written by American attorneys. The Sonuus patent provides useful background information about the applied science of electromagnetic induction.

Yamaha DX7 reverse engineered

I stumbled across a brilliant bit of DX7 reverse engineering by Ken Shirriff.

He created a composite die photograph of a decapsulated DX7 YM21280 OPS (operator) chip. Ken annotates and relates the die photo to U.S. Patent 4,554,857, explaining the operation of the DX7 OPS chip in detail. The YM21280 is driven by its brother, the YM21290 EGS (envelope) chip.

Quite frankly, this is fantastic work!

If you’re interested in how Yamaha implements FM (or FM-X) in hardware, you need to visit Ken’s pages and read the U.S. Patent on the DX7 internal design:

U.S. Patent 4,554,857, Electronic musical instrument capable of varying a tone synthesis operation algorithm, Tetsuo NISHIMOTO, November 26, 1985.

I also recommend the Yamaha DX7 Technical Analysis by ajxs.

Yamaha DX7 block diagram (U.S. Patent 4,554,857)

I will revisit Ken’s analysis when I have more energy. I fully expect, however, to see a modern day, scaled-up FM-X equivalent in the Yamaha SWP70. This — this! — is how Yamaha achieves 128 voice FM-X polyphony. Please keep this approach in mind when discussing what the SWP70 can do or what it can be extended to do. Montage/MODX FM-X ain’t code running on a RISC…

Copyright © 2023 Paul J. Drongowski

Montage M8x review: Yes, I played one!

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Grabbed this week’s music binder and tried out a Yamaha Montage M8x for an hour. Overall, a good experience. The demo M8x was set up at Guitar Center with two Yamaha HS-8 monitors.

Here are my observations…

Pianos galore

I dove into the pianos first, because acoustic piano (AP) sounds and practice are my primary need at this time.

The CFX and Bösendorfer Imperial sounded good and clear. In fact, everything sounded good and clear. Might be due to the HS-8s being brighter than my studio monitors; might be due to Pure Audio Circuit 2 (PAC 2).

The Hamburg Grand — a Steinway, presumably — is brighter than I expected. It should cut through a band mix, no prob. Definitely a high-quality addition to the Montage range.

I briefly checked out the Nashville C3, the C7, and the Felt pianos just to verify that they are there. The audio definitely had more clarity than MODX or even Genos (gen 1).

I dove into the CFX grand programming. Yep, one part with 18 elements.

Yet, with all the acoustic pianos, something was missing. Don’t get me wrong, Montage M acoustic pianos will be great for the stage, especially if the pianist is competing with guitar, drum and/or other general cacophony. The APs don’t have the depth or dynamism that I hear in Clavinova, for example. Maybe it’s the missing VRM, Grand Expression Modeling, whatever. People still may choose to record exposed piano solos using virtual instruments or the real deal itself.

The user interface

If you’ve been using either Montage or MODX, be ready for change. It took a little while to come to grips with the new user interface (UI). I managed to navigate through AWM2 element programming and effects without too much trouble. However, old habits must change!

The main screen is clear and responsive enough. Much has been said about the touch screen response — didn’t bother me. I like the button matrix for voice selection. Very easy to use and I quickly depended upon it. Performance search is different and it required some trial, error and time before I became accustomed to it.

The sub display is beautifully clear and readible. Some people have been grumbling about pixel jaggies. Again, didn’t bother me. I’ll take that large display any day over the slim sub display on Genos. The large subdisplay allows BIG numbers and parameter names — good for stage work.

UI-wise, I’m on board with Montage M although one hour is not really enough to get the full sense of workflow.

Electric pianos

Montage M has new electric piano (EP) waveforms and performances. They beat everything I’ve played on MODX, Clavinova and Genos. I’m jealous and can’t wait to get my hands on these waveforms and voices on a ligher weight, more affordable gig instrument. My homework shows anywhere from 8 to 12 strike levels. Definitely top-notch.

Rotary speaker sim

I tried diving into the drawbar organs through the voice category buttons. Not the best idea as I kept running into old familier organ Performances. I dialed in a few Performance, heard swirlies and mentally shrieked, “No, no, this can’t be happening again!”

I suggest starting out in the “Best of Montage M” Live Set. Or, do a little menu diving to verify that you are hearing the new VCM rotary speaker sim. Familiar, old organ Performances continue to use the old ROTARY SPEAKER 1 and ROTARY SPEAKER 2 effect types.

Keep your eyes open and look for a big VCM rotary icon. The VCM icon pops up on the sub display as well as effect edit screens. For some reason, Montage M treats the VCM rotary sim as a separate effect block. You won’t necessarily find it in the Insert A or Insert B slots.

Once found though, you’ll be happy. Well, at least happier than Montage/MODX. I’d like it better if rotary speed could be switched by a pedal, right out of the box. It’s a long reach to the MOD wheel or ribbon controller on the 88.

GEX keyboard

AP and EP with GEX is satisfying. I would not call GEX “light.” The key weight felt similar to the GH3/GH3X — and left my hands somewhat tired, too. Crazy me, NWX or GrandTouch (wood, linear grading) remain at the top of my list.

Playing drawbar organ on GEX is a chore, but you probably guessed that already. Palm swipes are not fun. I could say the same for strings, woodwinds and the other non-piano voices which I auditioned. The lack of PAT on M6/M7 is a genuinely awkward subject for synthesists, organists, or people like me who spend a lot of gig time playing non-piano voices.

AN-X Performances

I didn’t invest a huge amount of time trying AN-X. I browsed the AN-X Performances in the “Best of Montage M” Live Set. The AN-X sound reminds me of the my old AN-200 groove box and why I love it. Maybe it’s just the patches that I tried, but the sound connected me to AN/VA back in the day — reminiscent of the Sequential Circuit Prophet upon which AN was modelled.

I would be very pleased to own a Montage M with AN-X. I’m more excited about AN-X, now, than FM-X. The AN-X Performances have a certain dynamism.

The F-word

At this point, I don’t give a fig. GC had classic rock on the PA and how are you going to listen for anything quiet and subtle during “Smoke on the Water”? So, all I can say is, “Make your choices.”

Where does this leave me?

This time around, I’m interested in getting the best digital piano experience that I can — for the money. I want good value and I’m not willing to spring for any old expensive 88.

The Yamaha Montage M series sound terrific. In person, they look terrific. Whatever 88 I buy will sit in our dining room. Therefore, visual aesthetics are important. As much as I like the look of Montage M8x and P-515 (P-525), a furniture digital piano is more appropriate for the dining room. All the dancing lights would entertain guests, but… Might as well rule out CP88, too, on aesthetic grounds.

The other issue is the GEX keyboard. It’s a good keybed, but I find the NWX to be more comfortable for extended play. I may be in a bit of trouble here as Yamaha seems to be phasing out NWX. The P-515 successor, P-525, for example, has a GrandTouch-S (wood) keybed.

As to sound, the Montage M series acoustic and electric pianos are damned good. I love the variety. (Same could be said of Stage CP since it’s roughly the same line-up.) The VCM rotary speaker sim is very welcome and long overdue. The acoustic piano sounds, however, are missing VRM and I don’t want to compromise. VRM definitely enriches the digital sound especially when you’re playing solo or practicing.

Not that it’s a GEX thing specifically, but I have real concerns about playing non-piano voices on a so-called piano action keybed. I play organ, strings, woodwinds, etc. daily on MODX (el-cheapo semi-weighted action) and Genos (FSX). FSX is still a decent compromise across a wide spectrum of voices. I think synth players will be happier with M6/M7. Even Yamaha pitch M8x as “M8x for the pianist.”

At this point, I will probably find a landing place in Clavinova-land. That doesn’t mean I dislike the Montage M series. On the contrary, I can’t wait for “MOM” or “MOMO”! My MODX6 is going to wear out eventually…

GENOS2 incoming, November

It’s official.

Still awaiting SEQTRAK™

Copyright © Paul J. Drongowski

Montage M APs and EPs

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I’m starting to compare Yamaha Montage M waveforms against Montage/MODX waveforms.

Montage M acoustic (AP) and electric pianos (EP) got a very big bump! The table below has my raw, working notes.

    Montage       Montage M      Strike levels
    -----------   -----------    ---------------
    CF3 Stretch   CF3 Stretch    3       Soft/Med/Hard
    CF3 Flat      CF3 Flat       3       Soft/Med/Hard
    S6 Stretch    S6 Stretch     4       pp/mp/mf/ff
    S6 Flat       S6 Flat        4       pp/mp/mf/ff
    CFX           CFX            9    
    S700          S700           3       pp/mf/ff
    Upright       Upright        3       mp/f/ff
                  C7             5       pp/mp/mf/f/ff
                  Nashville C3   5       p/mp/mf/f/ff
                  Imperial       8    
                  Hamburg Grand  10    
                  U1 Upright     5       p/mp/mf/f/ff
                  Felt Piano     4       p/mp/mf/f
    CP70          CP70           1 
    CP80          CP80           5       p/mp/mf/f/ff
                  CP80-2 Attack  4       mp/mf/f/ff
    
    EP1           EP1            3       Soft/Med/Hard
    EP2           EP2            2       Soft/Hard
    EP3           EP3            2       Soft/Hard
    EP4           EP4            5       p/mp/mf/f/ff

    Rd Soft       Rd Soft        5       p/mp/mf/f/ff
    Rd Hard       Rd Hard        4       mp/mf/f/ff
    Rd73          Rd73           5       p/mp/mf/f/ff
    Rd78          Rd78           5       p/mp/mf/f/ff
    Wr1           Wr1            3       Soft/Med/Hard
    Wr2           Wr2            4       p/mf/f/ff
    Wr3           Wr3            5       p/mp/mf/f/ff

                  67Rd           9    
                  73Rd Studio    8    
                  74Rd Stage     10    
                  78Rd Studio    10    
                  Wr Warm        12    
                  Wr Wide        10

The Hamburg Grand is nicely detailed with 10 velocity levels. Given the change in waveform name, the CFX might (emphasis, “might”) have been refreshed. We should ask Yamaha about that. Yamaha are making good use of the new 128 element per part capability.

I can verify that the U1 Upright, Nashville C3 and Felt pianos in the character piano give-away are full fat (i.e., same number of strike levels as Montage M).

The Yamaha talking points don’t mention it much, but there are new Rhodes and Wurlitzer waveforms. And, they are beautifully detailed. There’s a new CP80, too.

I didn’t spot any changes in sampled DX, Clav, drawbar, combo, and pipe organ waveforms. Why update sampled DX when Montage has FM-X? Duh.

This is all pretty spiffy for AP and EP players. I hope some of these waveforms trickle into Genos2 and the Clavinova digital pianos. I’d love to see that Hamburg Grand in the (much anticipated) CLP-800 series. Throw in a few of the new EPs along with the Hamburg and Yamaha will tempt a lot of upgrades.

Given the range of pianos in Montage M, one wonders about the future of Stage CP (mark 2). Perhaps Stage CP will adopt technology from the Clavinova line — Virtual Resonance Modeling (VRM), in particular?

Copyright © 2023 Paul J. Drongowski

Ridin’ the E-bus

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Jan was kind enough to send me his thoughts about the “M” in “Montage M”. He hears evidence of MPE — MIDI Polyphonic Expression — in at least one of the audio examples posted by Yamaha.

Well, my ears probably aren’t as finely tuned as his, but his conjecture (“M” for “MPE”) makes sense. By now, you’ve probably seen the list of new Cubase 13 features including MIDI 2.0. Cubase has supported MPE for quite some time, and oddly, Yamaha synths (when used as external controllers) do not support MPE! Thus, it’s time for Montage M and future Yamaha synths to catch up with their Steinberg cousins.

MIDI 2.0 has a number of MPE-like features to control individual notes, e.g., pitch bend individual notes instead of all active notes in a MIDI channel. Some analysts regard MPE as a “bridge” to MIDI 2.0 with MIDI 2.0 as the final destination.

I was happy to leave it there, but my mind wandered down to the circuit level. In particular, I wondered if Yamaha’s internal controller design is up to the task of MPE and MIDI 2.0. MIDI 2.0, after all, increases controller resolution up to 32 bits and note velocity up to 16 bits. That’s quite a leap from MIDI 1.x 7-bit resolution in both cases (modulo the few situations where a few more bits are set aside).

Web discussions usually focus on synthesis and ignore control implementation. With the change to MIDI 2.0, suddenly the control infrastructure requires examination, too, and possibly an update. (“We cannot develop the current MONTAGE any further.”)

So, how are key, knob, slider and button gestures detected and communicated in a mid- to upper-tier Yamaha synth/arranger? By mid- to upper-tier, I mean those instruments which incorporate an SWP70 (SWP50/51) tone generator IC.

In the case of Montage (and MODX), keys, knobs, sliders and buttons are scanned by dedicated microcontrollers. The Montage has three microcontrollers:

  • E-PNS4: 40MHz ARM Cortex-M3 32-bit single core microcontroller (MB9AF131NBPQC)
  • E-VKS: 40MHz ARM Cortex-M3 32-bit single core microcontroller (MB9AF131KAPMC)
  • E-PNS3: 10MHz Toshiba 8-bit microcontroller (TMP89FW24AFG-7KH4)

E-PNS4 scans knobs (24 lines, 12-bit ADC) and the left/right front panel switches. E-PNS3 scans the sliders (8 lines, 10-bit ADC). E-VKS scans the keyboard.

The three microcontrollers and the Master SWP70 tone generator are connected by an I2C bus which Yamaha calls the “E-bus”. The three microcontrollers send events directly to the tone generator. The event message stream does not pass through the ARM host CPU (running Linux). Latency is minimized thanks to the direct path. And, as far as internal synthesis is concerned, the events are not converted nor passed through conventional MIDI links.

The ARM host CPU gets its E-bus messages from the Master SWP70. The Master SWP70 generates an E-bus interrupt request (SWP_EIRQN) when message data is available.

The best way to describe I2C is “poor man’s Ethernet.” I2C is serial and requires only three wires: clock (E-SCL), data (E-SDA) and reset (E-IC). I2C can send multiple bytes in a single bus transaction.

I found three European patents that describe the E-bus: EP1235202A2, EP1235202A3, EP1235202B1. Basically, Yamaha (re)filed three separate patents with the European Patent Office in order to extend the life of the IP. The patent title is “Bi-directional serial bus system for electronic musical instrument,” and the inventors are Shinya Sakurada, Akira Iizuka, Harumichi Hotta, Shizuhiko Kawai, Kozo Tokuda, Masaki Kudo. The first patent was published August 28, 2002.

There are two message data formats:

  • Standard data: 5 bytes in length (3 data bytes)
  • Extended data: 17 bytes in length (15 data bytes)

Generally, events are communicated in the 5-byte, standard data format. The following table (“FIG. 8”) is taken from the patent. It summarizes the E-bus events.

You probably picked up on the similarity to standard MIDI 1.x events. There aren’t any channels, however. The low-order nibble of the first data byte provides additional event-specific information (port number or 4 additional velocity bits).

This analysis opens a can of worms. Will Montage M scan analog signals at 10-bits? 12-bits? Can the existing E-bus protocol communicate values measured at higher resolution? Can the stock SWP70 tone generator at the receiving end of the event stream interpret and respond to higher resolution events? How will low resolution values be up-scaled to 32 bits? Is that even required by the MIDI 2.0 spec?

I guess we’re gonna find out! We should all thank the engineers who took on this rather unglamorous task.

Copyright © 2023 Paul J. Drongowski