COPYING VOICE DATA w/ARPEGGIOS TO A PERFORMANCE or MIX in a Motif ES

MUSIC PRODUCTION and PERFORMANCE With the Motif ES

Skills Learned
• How to explore a Voice and analyze its content
• Copy a Voice to a PERFORMANCE or MIX
• Copy System Effects and Arpeggio functions from a Voice to a Performance or Mix
• What changes when a Voice is placed in a Performance Part or Mix Part

Phil Clendeninn
Senior Product Specialist
Technology Products
©Yamaha Corporation of America

Scenario: You have found a Voice that you like and it has assigned arpeggios (five different arpeggios can be associated with a Voice). You want to use the Voice and its assigned arpeggios in a Pattern/Song Mix or perhaps in a Performance with other Voices. When you assign a Voice to a Pattern/Song MIX or to a Performance certain of the data is stripped off and reassigned to a default setting. This includes:

• Insertion Effects – which can be activated for up to eight Parts of any Mix and for all four Parts of a Performance.1
• Reverb/Chorus assignments - These so-called “System Effects” which were programmed individually in Voice mode are now shared by all PARTS of a MIX or Performance.
• Volume – which is set to a default of 100 on a scale of 0-127.
• MIDI channel assignment - Each Part of a MIX is automatically assigned a successively higher MIDI channel that initially corresponds to the PART number by default. In a PERFORMANCE all PARTS are on the same Basic MIDI channel.
• Arpeggios – If a Voice had arpeggios associated with it in Voice mode they are stripped off.

If you wish to copy Voice mode settings, like the arpeggios and System Effects, to the Voice’s PART of the MIX follow this step-by-step tutorial.

We will use the USER 001 “Gt: Unplugged” Voice as an example.

Let’s assume you want to build a Pattern around this particular Voice. First, let’s learn how to explore this Voice and see what it has going for it. To learn about any Voice from the main screen press the [INFORMATION] button.

1 By default the first eight internal Parts of a Mix will recall their Insertion Effect routing from Voice mode. By default all four internal Parts of a Performance will recall their Insertion Effect routing.

This guitar sound is in Bank MSB/Bank LSB 063/0082 – that’s the User 1 bank. This Voice is made from four different Elements. An Element is a multi-sample in the case of the internal Motif ES Voices. The polyphony mode is POLY. Portamento (glide) mode is OFF. The Pitch Bend range is –2/+2 or up and down a whole step. The Insertion Effects that are assigned to this Voice are a “3-band EQ” and a “Vintage Distortion”. The reverb is a “Woody Room” and the chorus is “Chorus 1”.

• Press the [EXIT] button or press [VOICE] to return to the main screen. From the main screen press F6 ARP to learn about the assigned (associated) Arpeggios. When this Voice is initially recalled ARP1 is active. It is from the preset “GtKM” bank (Guitar Keyboard Mega Voice) of preset arpeggios.

Arp1 007 Unplug D
Arp2 006 Unplug C
Arp3 008 Unplug E
Arp4 009 Unplug G
Arp5 005 Unplug B
Tempo is 113 BPM

Because we are curious and there is no better way to learn than to explore…let’s see what makes this Voice tick. If you press the [EDIT] button and navigate to the Control Sets you can view what assignments have been made. You will be able to use these assignments once the Voice has been placed in a MIX so let’s be aware of what they are. From the main Voice screen:

• Press [EDIT]
• Press [COMMON]
• Press [F4] CTRL SET (Control Set)

SF1 Control Sets 1 / 2
Set 1: Mod Wheel is assigned to the Common LFO
Set 2: AS1 is set to control the INSERT EFFECT A’s Low EQ Gain

2 You will see these MSB/LSB Bank Select numbers again when you go to the Voice select screen in MIXING mode.

SF2 Control Sets 3 / 4
Set 3: AS1 is also set to control INSERT EFFECT B’s Overdrive amount
Set 4: AS2 is set to control the Chorus send amount

SF3 Control Sets 5 / 6
Set 5: Ribbon control is set to Pitch Coarse allowing you to bend the pitch. (Shown above)
Set 6: is unassigned (Shown above)

When we place this Voice in either a Performance Part or a Mix Part, as mentioned, some of its assigned parameters will be changed, reset or stripped off completely. Voices are placed in a somewhat neutral state as you are going to combine them with other Voices. A PART is an important concept to understand. It is defined as a Motif ES Voice that has been placed in a Performance or a Mix – it is the set of parameters that are assigned to control the Voice – they are offsets to the actual Voice parameters. So when you save a Performance or a Mix you are actually not saving the Voice data itself but these set of parameters that are now associated with the original Voice. This allows you to edit the PART without destructively editing the Voice data itself. What this accomplishes is you can use the same Voice in other Performances and Mixes completely uniquely. Next we will learn about how to COPY a VOICE to a multi MIX and then how to COPY it to a PERFORMANCE.

COPY
As mentioned when you move the “Unplugged” Voice into a Performance PART or into a Mix PART you will notice that the Reverb and Chorus assignments are set to the default (R3 Hall and Chorus 1), and all the associated arpeggios are removed. Activating the INSERT Switch restores the Insertion Effect but to restore the arpeggios we will use the convenient COPY JOB function. Here’s how to make it work for you:

Initialize the Mix or the Performance you wish to use (this process will work equally well for each). Initialize is a JOB found always at F1.

When you initialize a Performance it will place the Full Grand piano sound in PART 01. You can change this to your sound and then use the COPY function to restore its Voice mode settings. When you initialize a Mix it places the Full Grand piano sound in all 16 PARTS. You can change the Part you want to your sound, then use the COPY function to restore the Voice’s setting. What follows are the step-by-step instructions for this procedure; first for a MIX followed by the step-by-step for a PERFORMANCE.

For MIX Mode
Select Song Mix or Pattern mix mode:
• Press [MIXING]
• Press [JOB]
• Press [F1] INIT
• Press [ENTER] / [YES] to execute
• Press [MIXING]
• Press [F2] VOICE
• Highlight the Voice in PART 01
• Press [Category Search] or use your favorite method to select the Voice you want to work with. In our example select the “USER 001: Gt:Unplugged”. Bank MSB/Bank LSB: 63/8, Voice number 1

• Press [JOB]
• Press [F3] COPY

• Set the screen as shown above.
• Press ENTER/YES to execute

This will Copy the ARP settings from the VOICE in PART 1 to the current Mix

• Set the screen as shown above.
• Press ENTER/YES to execute

This will Copy the REVERB and CHORUS setting from the VOICE in PART 1 to the current Mix. Take note that when you copy the Reverb and Chorus to the current Mix, all the Parts will now use these effects as they become the SYSTEM Effects for the entire Mix.

Now when you return to the main SONG or PATTERN screen you will have all five Arpeggios that were associated with “Unplugged” in Voice mode associated with this Mix. And the Reverb and Chorus algorithms of the “Unplugged” Voice are now the System Effects of this Mix.

• Store the Mix

For Performance
• Select PERFORMANCE mode:
• Press [PERFORM]
• Press [JOB]
• Press [F1] INIT
• Press [ENTER] / [YES] to execute
• Press [PERFORM] to return to the main screen
• Press [F2] VOICE
• Highlight the Voice
• Press [Category Search] or use your favorite method to select the Voice you want to work with. In our example select the “USER 001: Gt:Unplugged”.
• -Press [JOB]
• -Press [F3] COPY

• Set the screen as shown above.
• Press ENTER/YES to execute

This will Copy the ARP settings from the VOICE in PART 1 to the current location.

• Set the screen as shown above.
• Press ENTER/YES to execute

This will Copy the REVERB and CHORUS setting from the VOICE in PART 1 to the current location. Take note that when you copy the Reverb and Chorus to the current Performance, all the Parts will now use these effects as they become the SYSTEM Effects for the Performance. Of course, you can control the SEND amount from each PART on the Motif ES Mixer.

Now when you return to the main Performance screen you will have the 5 Arpeggios that were associated with “Unplugged” in Voice mode associated with this Performance.
• Store the Performance.

Phil Clendeninn
Senior Product Specialist
Technology Products
©Yamaha Corporation of America