I’m working on some parts for a band I’m auditioning for next week with my XF8.

For some of the songs I’d really like to play organ parts with my left hand and piano parts in my right hand. In order to get the most of the MOTIF’s keyboard I’d like to drop a organ patch down 3-4 octaves in a performance patch.

The XF8 provides for transposition of two octaves up or down in voice patches and performance patches. I’ve tried dropping the organ voice down two octaves and the part for the organ in a performance patch down two octaves. However, when I play the performance patch the organ part is still only transposed two octaves down, not four octaves down.

I checked the manual and made sure I ticked the “Param. with Voice” box, which seems to include Note shift infomation, but no, that makes no difference. Still stuck with two octaves down.

I know I can use the “OCTAVE” button to do this, but by the look of it that means I’ll have to remember to push that button every time I play the song. I’d like to avoid this if I can.

Surely I can transpose a voice/performance patch down 4 octaves somehow? I want to make the best use of the XF8’s magnificent 88-note keyboard. I must be missing something.

Somebody please set me straight on this.

Best Regards,
Grant

Note Shift is +/- 24 semitones...there’s your 2 octaves max.

Never tried it myself, but try STORING a new organ VOICE with the 2-octave Note Shift (at the VOICE level)...and then try doing a 2 octave shift/STORE again, either at the VOICE level (STORE the new VOICE again), or the PART level once you are in PERFORMANCE Mode.

Let us know if you can get it down the 4 octaves you want.

EDIT:  After re-reading your post carefully, it seems you may have tried this 2-step approach.  Have you made a point to STORE the shifted VOICE as a NEW VOICE each time?

I’m not confident that saving a completely new patch out under a new name will fix this, but I’ll definitely give it a try. Thanks.

Note Shift is an offset to the original tuning of a Voice, and is limited to +/-24 semitones (2 octaves), no matter where it’s applied. If you need to move the tuning more than that, edit the Voice at the Element level. The Pitch Coarse setting allows for +/-48 semitones (4 octaves). See page 71 of the XF Reference Manual for details. Be sure to edit every active Element in the Voice (each one where the Element Switch is “on"), and of course STORE the edited Voice.

As 5Pin describes, select the (organ) voices you like and press edit.  You’re going to change the pithc of every element that is active in the voice (it could be up to 8 elements used in the voice - you can tell because the lights are lit, or you can look at the main oscillator screen and its shown in the top left I think).

Select each element one at a time byt pressing the 1-8 button, and then press the pitch function button under your LCD screen.  move cursor to Course tune and you can retune +/- 4 octaves.  Each octave is 12 half steps, so 12, 24, 36 or 48 is what you want to course tune.  Be sure to course tune all of the elements the same amount, and of course be sure to save to a User memory location.

If you want a “normal” pitch in the lower section of your keybed, you probably want to tune up, not down.  but you’ll know what you’re trying to do.

Put the voice in your performance.  You can still tune an additional +/- 2 octaves here as well using the Note Shift function in Perf edit mode, for a total possible shift of 6 octaves.  I don’t know why the limited it here to only +/- 2 octaves, I’ve had many a voice I had to edit the voice element course tune and save a new voice because I needed to shift more than 2 octaves.

Hi all,

Thanks 5pinDIN & motidave for your most helpful posts. You are both of course correct and as 5pinDIN points out, page 71 of the manual explains how to shift a voice up or down in octaves using the Pitch Coarse setting at the Element level. I can do that now, so thanks, now I can get on with the fun stuff!

Just one thing though, I noticed that when I dropped the voice (a factory sound called “Rocky AS2") two or three octaves, the timbre of the voice changed slightly.  All I have done it to so far is drop it down two or three octaves, but when I do I notice that the voice seems to lose it’s grainy, overdriven quality a bit. It seems to “clean up” a bit. I thought this odd, because all I’ll doing is changing octaves. Must be how the MOTIF’s synthesis works.

Is there a setting I can play with to compensate, get the overdrive back? What’s the right way to approach this?

I really appreciate everybody’s kind help with this.

Best,
Grant

synthmax - 09 May 2015 07:27 AM

[...]Just one thing though, I noticed that when I dropped the voice (a factory sound called “Rocky AS2") two or three octaves, the timbre of the voice changed slightly.[...]

Before I address this, could you clarify something first? Do you want to…
1) shift the pitch of the organ downward, so that playing a particular key will result in lower pitch than playing the same key with the original settings?
--- or ---
2) shift the pitch of the organ upward, so that playing a key will result in higher pitch than playing the same key with the original settings? This would make it possible to play the organ Part in a Performance at the lower end of the keyboard.

Hi 5pinDIN,

Thanks so much for your help with this.

I am doing what you described in option 2. I’m trying to set things up so I can play an organ voice treble part in the lower half of the keyboard, whilst playing an electric piano voice treble part in the upper half of the keyboard.

Regards,
Grant

synthmax - 11 May 2015 03:52 AM

Hi 5pinDIN,

Thanks so much for your help with this.

You’re welcome.

 

synthmax -

I am doing what you described in option 2. I’m trying to set things up so I can play an organ voice treble part in the lower half of the keyboard, whilst playing an electric piano voice treble part in the upper half of the keyboard.

OK. My first suggestion is to use Note Shift to as great a degree as possible, since that will less affect the sound than using Coarse Pitch.

I’ve attached a zipped “All” file with three User1 Voices.

A01 Rocky AS2 is the original factory Voice.

A02 Rocky AS2 +3oct has the Coarse Pitch increased by 36 semitones for each of the five active Elements. It exhibits the tonal change you mentioned.

A02 Rocky AS2 +3oct 5pin has Note Shift set to +24 semitones in Common Edit. Coarse Pitch is increased by 12 semitones for each of the five active Elements. All Break Points for Filter and Amplitude Scale settings have been decreased by an octave. Element 2 Filter Cutoff has been increased from 44 to 100, and Filter Gain from 240 to 245. Element 4 Filter Gain has been increased from 240 to 250. While these settings don’t exactly duplicate the original sound of Rocky AS2 (shifted by 3 octaves), it comes reasonably close. I’ll leave any further tweaking to the ambitious.

You can load the attached X3A file as is (be sure to first save an “All” file of your own work), or just set the load Type to “voice” and load any of the Voices to whichever User location you prefer.

I hope that provides a general idea of how to shift pitch with minimal impact on the sound.

Rocky AS2 5pinDIN.n3.X3A.zip  (File Size: 13KB - Downloads: 278)

cmayhle - 07 May 2015 12:22 AM

Never tried it myself, but try STORING a new organ VOICE with the 2-octave Note Shift (at the VOICE level)...and then try doing a 2 octave shift/STORE again, either at the VOICE level (STORE the new VOICE again), or the PART level once you are in PERFORMANCE Mode....

synthmax - 07 May 2015 02:49 AM

I’m not confident that saving a completely new patch out under a new name will fix this, but I’ll definitely give it a try. Thanks.

5pinDIN - 11 May 2015 11:32 AM

...OK. My first suggestion is to use Note Shift to as great a degree as possible, since that will less affect the sound than using Coarse Pitch.
....

I wish I had access to my XF to try what I suggested earlier.

To the OP:  Have you tried using Note Shift alone in the process I hypothesized about?  If not, you might try it to see if it:  1) works, and if so does it:  2) help in the tonal alteration issue of the VOICE at all.

cmayhle - 11 May 2015 12:25 PM

I wish I had access to my XF to try what I suggested earlier.

Any Note Shift offset is stored with the edited Voice. If set at +24 semitones in the original Voice, the newly stored Voice will still indicate Note Shift at +24 semitones, and therefore can’t be further shifted. If used as a Part in a Performance, the same thing applies.

5pinDIN - 11 May 2015 01:03 PM

cmayhle - 11 May 2015 12:25 PM

I wish I had access to my XF to try what I suggested earlier.

Any Note Shift offset is stored with the edited Voice. If set at +24 semitones in the original Voice, the newly stored Voice will still indicate Note Shift at +24 semitones, and therefore can’t be further shifted. If used as a Part in a Performance, the same thing applies.

Got it!  Thanks 5pinDIN.

synthmax - 09 May 2015 07:27 AM

Hi all,

Thanks 5pinDIN & motidave for your most helpful posts. You are both of course correct and as 5pinDIN points out, page 71 of the manual explains how to shift a voice up or down in octaves using the Pitch Coarse setting at the Element level. I can do that now, so thanks, now I can get on with the fun stuff!

Just one thing though, I noticed that when I dropped the voice (a factory sound called “Rocky AS2") two or three octaves, the timbre of the voice changed slightly.  All I have done it to so far is drop it down two or three octaves, but when I do I notice that the voice seems to lose it’s grainy, overdriven quality a bit. It seems to “clean up” a bit. I thought this odd, because all I’ll doing is changing octaves. Must be how the MOTIF’s synthesis works.

Is there a setting I can play with to compensate, get the overdrive back? What’s the right way to approach this?

I really appreciate everybody’s kind help with this.

Best,
Grant

On the second point - I don’t know if this is your problem but you can try it easily and find out.

Voices have element-specific settings but often also have overall Voice (common) parameter settings (offsets) that affect all of the elements.  To copy these overall offsets with the Voice into the Performance, do this:

1 Select your Performance
2 Press Edit to edit the Performance
3 Select the Voice in question (organ) - #1, 2, 3, or 4 button
4 Press F1 Voice menu, then SF1 Voice Settings menu
5 About half way down on the left side is “Param. with Voice” - if this is set Off, toggle it to On.

6 Then reselect the Voice you want again and it should copy over any Voice parameter offset settings with the Voice.

See Reference Manual Page 109.

If this wasnt the cause, then I’m not sure.  good luck

It’s often important to use Parameter with Voice as motidave has suggested, once changes due to pitch shifting are addressed in the Voice programming.