Yamaha offers the Montage with its Motion Control Synthesizer Engine—a powerful and intuitive way to interact and control sound. Montage is available as the Montage6 (61-keys), the Montage7 (76) and the Montage8 with 88 piano-weighted keys.
The Motion Control Synthesizer Engine uses two sound engines: Advanced Wave Memory 2 (AWM2) and FM-X. The AWM2 engine is much more powerful than the previous Motif XF flagship with nearly 10 times more wave memory at 5.67GB and 1.75GB of integrated user flash memory, double the effects and twice the polyphony. Previous Motif libraries are compatible with Montage.
FM-X is a sophisticated FM synthesizer engine capable of producing classic ‘80s or EDM sounds with incredible dynamic range, power and fidelity. The Montage6 sent for review has a large color touch screen, endless rotary encoders and the Super Knob for controlling multiple parameters simultaneously.
My keyboard player and I found the sounds fantastic and the way they are arranged and organized into Sub Categories made them easy to find. We especially liked the piano and string sounds and the many built-in controller features. Besides Pitch Bend and Mod Wheels, there are also a small programmable Ribbon Controller, two assignable buttons, Motion Sequencer trigger on/off, plus Arpeggio on/off buttons.
The Yamaha Montage keyboard is a great new flagship synthesizer and you’ll be able to try it out at the 2017 Winter NAMM Show.
Barry Rudolph is a recording engineer/mixer who has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs, and more. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing editor for Mix Magazine. barryrudolph.com
