Kier Darby

I have just finished publishing a video series documenting all the performances that are new to Yamaha MONTAGE M, up to the latest firmware 2.10.1. Note that these videos do not contain the many thousands of performances inherited from the classic MONTAGE and the MOTIF series before it. I thought it would also be useful to have a comprehensive index of all these performances so that people can jump instantly to any of them for reference purposes, so here it is! Click the category buttons above the list to jump directly to the list of performances in that category. Yamaha MONTAGE M New Performances (up to firmware 2.10) Piano Keyboard Organ Guitar Bass Strings Brass Woodwind Syn Lead Pad/Choir Syn Comp Chromatic Perc Drum/Perc Sound FX Musical FX Ethnic Piano Piano / Acoustic C7 Grand Piano / Acoustic C7 Piano / Acoustic Imperial Piano / Acoustic Nashville C3 Piano / Acoustic Nashville Vin...

While lots of MONTAGE M owners have been following my Demystifying MONTAGE and MODX video series , there have been various requests for a MONTAGE M specific series, and I’m happy to announce that the first few of videos from the new series have now been published. To date, there are videos covering: Getting Started: Finding Sounds, Live Sets and Category Search Playing Performances: Arpeggios, scenes and controls How to use EVERY button, knob and slider - a comprehensive tutorial Building a new performance: Loading parts, managing splits and rhythm patterns Using scenes to switch keyboard control, arpeggios and more Building a multi-keyboard performance with splits and layers Integrating MONTAGE M with Logic Pro Polyphonic aftertouch for MONTAGE M6 and M7 How to upgrade MONTAGE M firmware to 2.10 More to come soon!

I have published a brand new guide to getting the most out of your Yamaha MONTAGE M with Logic Pro. This tutorial will guide you through initial connection and configuration, project setup, recording MIDI, stereo and multi-channel audio, sending program change events to the MONTAGE M, playing virtual instruments and using external performance parts, MIDI routing, the DAW remote and how to use the E.S.P. virtual MONTAGE M in the most resource-efficient manner. Even if you are well versed in how to work with the classic MONTAGE and MODX in Logic, or if you have watched my original video series, there are a number of important differences in the MIDI handling that warrant a video dedicated to MONTAGE M.

The Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver is a vital part of getting Yamaha hardware working with your computer, but installing it on macOS can be challenging due to the need to edit the computer's security policy. The driver is required for USB communication between MONTAGE / MONTAGE M / MODX and your computer, to allow your DAW to send and receive multi-channel digital audio, and multi-port MIDI, including the functionality of the DAW Remote. On modern Macs, this driver requires changes to the macOS security policy before it can operate. Fear not, because this tutorial will take you through the entire process and ensure successful results. Note, driver version 3.1.7 is tested and working perfectly with macOS 15 and the Apple Silicon M4 family of processors.

The MONTAGE M allows performance PARTs outside of the keyboard control group to arbitrarily set their MIDI tx/rx channel, and if that were the only change from the MIDI implementation of the classic MONTAGE and MODX, everyone would be happy. But it's not. MONTAGE M8x, M6 and M7 dramatically change the design of the ZONE system, which was intended to allow PARTs to control MIDI-connected instruments, but some of the changes massively reduce the capabilities and flexibility users have come to expect from MONTAGE family synthesizers. This video begins with a look at how the MIDI implementation for the MONTAGE family has developed, and then looks at the problems that MONTAGE M introduces. If you already know everything about MIDI on the classic MONTAGE, jump to 06:52 . Please join me in lobbying Yamaha via Ideascale and any other means to ask for a firmware update to restore the power and flexibility that MONTAGE M has lost compared to MONTAGE and MODX. Ideascale links: ...