Motif City

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Yamaha has upgraded the operating system for the XS line of keyboards. Highlights are below. The most significant enhancement is that you can now record your Performances directly to WAV format on USB media (only 16 bit @ 41khz but that will have to do). This is a major development for Yamaha. It doesn't quite satisfy my wishlist (the ability to export an entire pattern or song to individual WAV files), but it proves the XS's OS (MonteVista, an embedded Linux operating system -- you can read the original case study here: http://www.mvista.com/download/case_study_MontaVista_Linux_and_Yamaha.pdf) is more than up to the task. Then again, Yamaha wants everyone to own mLan and transfer via Firewire, so it may never happen. I will install this update tonioght and give it a whirl. I sincerely hope Yamaha has optimized the code and made the screen redraws faster. One of the things I adored about the Es was how fast the screens were. I miss that immensely..

In addition to the new OS, Yamaha has also updated the XS editor, too. Here are the links

Man, did Yamaha (needlessly) complicate the sequencer in the XS or what? I miss the ES's simple sequencer. It was so fast and lightweight. Anyways, I'm going to be posting some tips from time to time. Hope they help. Here are a few common operations,issues and workarounds. Feel free to add on if I missed anything..

This tutorial applies to the Motif XS:

Copying a section within a pattern
When you want to copy, e.g. section A to section B in the same pattern, you use the pattern>job>copy pattern operation. On that screen you MUST check the "current sequence" box for both the source and destination sections. Beware though. If you have material on the destination section, and you copy another section to i, sometimes it wigs out. In my case every time I went to switch to the copied section, all MIDI hell broke loose. But if I copy to an empty section, no issues. Lesson: always clear your destination section first.