Greetings to all,

I went back thru the archive to try and find an answer to this and was almost successful. A post from 3/2014 touched upon the subject but was not followed up on by anyone in the know.

I still own my Motif Classic 8 and need to transfer many patterns of MIDI (utilized by the sequencer)to my XF8. Realizing the difference in file formats (W2P/W3P) to (X3A/X3P) and five generations of Motif compatibility issues, can this be done fairly simply? Bad_Mister had mentioned a “direct transfer via MIDI” solution but no information was provided in that particular set of posts. Was wondering what the best possible solution is for this type of transfer and if the procedure could be posted here in great detail for a dummy like me.

Like the “Terminator” once said, “I have many detailed files” and really need to get them converted into the Motif XF8. I realize that most parameter, voice and mix settings will probably not transfer properly and that’s okay. I really need to have the MIDI data in the sequences sent over to the XF8 where I can rebuild the patterns from there.

To all the Guru’s, thank you for being on here and for all your efforts.  J.

The only really practical way to do this is via Standard MIDI File and a notepad (digital or other!). Save your Motif sequence as a .MID and simply make a note of your Voice assignments and any important mixing elements like a particular insert effect, level, pan position etc.

When you load the MIDI file into your XF you’ll just have the note information, no voicing or mix parameters. But at this point, the XF, as no doubt you know, has a slew of additional features (insert effects, effects themselves, voices, arps...) and it’s best to just retain the parts from your original and ‘start over’ with fresh ears; armed with fresh features.

For reference, obviously you will want to keep a note of which instrument played which track, so just do this manually.

If you really want to, you can insert program changes, pan, volume etc messages right into the MIDI data in your original Motif sequence. But, imho, this is a redundant exercise and one where this ‘additional’ data will probably come back to haunt you at some later stage once you’re in XF-land.

JonnyQwest - 01 March 2015 06:32 PM

[...]I still own my Motif Classic 8 and need to transfer many patterns of MIDI (utilized by the sequencer)to my XF8. Realizing the difference in file formats (W2P/W3P) to (X3A/X3P) and five generations of Motif compatibility issues, can this be done fairly simply? Bad_Mister had mentioned a “direct transfer via MIDI” solution but no information was provided in that particular set of posts. Was wondering what the best possible solution is for this type of transfer and if the procedure could be posted here in great detail for a dummy like me. [...]

“Direct transfer via MIDI” can be done with sequences, although “fairly simply” might not be how it would go.

The basic concept isn’t difficult - connect two synths via MIDI cable, MIDI-Out to MIDI-In. Play a sequence on one, record it on the other {I presume you’ve done those things separately before on both the Classic and the XF). It’s more readily accomplished with Songs than Patterns - Patterns can be chained and converted to Songs. You can arm all the tracks on the XF so that everything is captured in one pass (see All Track on pages 145-146 of the XF Reference Manual). Once a Song is copied via MIDI, it could be Split to Pattern again, as needed - that’s likely where you’d find the process most tedious and time-consuming.

You might find using SMFs, as MrMotif mentioned, to be a preferable approach.

Thanks guyz for getting back to me so quickly. Being old school I really like the MIDI cable approach and was hoping it could be done this way but wasn’t really sure with all the modern tech. I’ll leave the file extensions to the youngins’ as they seem to get along better with that aspect of these idioms. I guess it pays to be breast fed on bits and bites.

I’ll try these approaches and hope all goes well. I have 305 patterns/songs to transfer.

Thanks again; fingers crossed.  J.