MOTIF XF Series

A new OS update for the MOTIF XF offers wireless MIDI connectivity with Yamaha’s new iPad applications. After connecting a compatible Wi-Fi USB adapter, you can send and receive MIDI messages between the XF and the iPad. There are new Yamaha iPad applications which expand the features of MOTIF XF including Keyboard Arp & Drum Pad, Faders & XY Pad, Multi Editor Essential and Voice Editor Essential which make it easy to play, tweak, mix and edit your MOTIF XF wirelessly from an Apple iPad. Check out new possibilities of MOTIF on the following page.

The MOTIF XF boasts a rich collection of instrument Voices that includes piano, EPs, strings, wind instruments, orchestral sounds, guitars, basses, and drums, as well as a wide variety of vintage and modern synth sounds. Of special note are the detailed digital re-creations of two Yamaha grand pianos (a 9' CFIII and a 7' S6) that only an acoustic piano manufacturer could achieve. The reproduction in minute detail of even very subtle nuances results in exquisitely crafted piano Voices that will satisfy even the most demanding players.New waveforms have been added to the MOTIF XF, which now contains a huge total of 741 MB of waveforms.Starting with the S6 piano, the 136 newly-added Voices include keyboard sounds such as those of clavinets and organs as well as a wide range of new sounds from orchestral to hip-hop. This huge internal wave memory ensures that the MOTIF XF is the best sounding and most versatile keyboard workstation right out of the box.

Two flash board slots accommodate two proprietary Yamaha flash board options -- a 512MB board and 1GB board. With two 1GB boards installed, you have a total of 2GB of flash memory available to you. Because this is re-writable flash memory, once you’ve loaded a sample, it’s always in your MOTIF until you decide to replace it with something else.The samples could be some of the new MOTIF Voice libraries or they could be your own samples -- the back ground vocals from your latest album that you need to take on the road, your favorite VST sound that you’ve converted to MOTIF format or even that coffee pot in your kitchen that you know will make a great snare sound. Wherever you get the samples, you can now “roll your own” customized 2GB sample library.Imagine the power of a fully customized MOTIF XS with 3 GB of sounds (internal, RAM and Flash) instantly available at your fingertips.The MOTIF XF-specific third-party sample and Voice libraries can be purchased at yamahasynth.com and Yamaha has made the “Inspiration In a Flash” 400MB sample Voice library available for download at www.inspirationinaflash.com and easysounds.de

The tone generator that the MOTIF XF has inherited from the MOTIFXS makes an 8-element-per-voice structure possible. Combined with Yamaha’s XA (Expanded Articulation), this 8-element structure allows you to achieve stunningly accurate acoustic instruments including expressive articulations that up until now have been difficult to re-create in electronic instruments. For example, you can re-create the natural legato of wind instruments, the key release noises of pianos and other instruments, guitar slides and harmonics, and the many different articulations for string instruments (spicato, tremolo and pizzicato, etc.). The AF1 and AF2 buttons on the front panel make it easy to control Voices with multiple articulations.For synthesizer sounds, the 18 different filter types, advanced 6-stage pitch, filter and amplitude envelopes, unique Wave Cycle feature and assignable modulation Control Sets make the MOTIF capable of reproducing any synth sound from vintage to modern.The tone generator also supports half damper pedaling through the use of the separately sold FC3 foot pedal. Using half damper pedaling with the damper resonance effect, you can achieve an even more realistic and richer piano sound that simulates the sound board of a grand piano and responds naturally to sophisticated piano pedaling techniques.

La technologie Yamaha VCM (Virtual Circuitry Modeling) simule le comportement des compresseurs, égaliseurs et phasers vintage au niveau même des circuits. Ainsi, cela a permis à Yamaha d'améliorer la qualité des sons du MOTIF en reproduisant la texture de ces effets mythiques, grâce à la modélisation des composants des pédales d'effet originales jusqu'à la plus petite résistance. Ces effets de plus en plus recherchés ne sont plus disponibles seulement dans le fleuron de nos consoles numériques, mais également dans le MOTIF XF. Par ailleurs, en connectant un microphone à l'entrée audio du MOTIF, vous pourrez utiliser le vocodeur intégré pour appliquer des effets à votre voix ou utiliser celle-ci pour créer des harmonies. Enfin, le MOTIF XF comporte la même réverbération de référence Rev-X que l'on trouve dans le multieffets haut de gamme SPX2000.

The MOTIF XF6 and XF7 use high-quality FSX keyboards with 61 and 76 keys, respectively. The MOTIF XF8 uses a BH (balanced hammer) keyboard with 88 keys. The FSX keyboard uses a newly-developed mechanism to provide a smooth touch that is both comfortable to play and responsive to your touch. It’s easy to play fast passages, including glissandos and trills. It is also worth mentioning that the keys are very quiet.The balanced hammer keyboard is filled with the know-how and technology that Yamaha has developed producing full concert grand pianos and stage pianos. To make a keyboard with a piano touch that can still work comfortably with any voice, we took a graded hammer keyboard, which is a popular keyboard for electronic pianos, and adjusted it for use with a synthesizer: we balanced the keys to the same weight and made adjustments so that the synthesizer can support after touch and other features. While pursuing the real touch of a grand piano, we also provide a touch that is exceptionally suited to the performance of a multitude of synthesizer sounds.

Vous pouvez utiliser l'arpégiateur pour jouer des motifs exclusifs. En additionnant des sons, vous pouvez donner forme à vos idées très rapidement. Le MOTIF XF excelle à la fois dans la qualité et la quantité des arpèges. Outre des séquences typiques, vous trouverez de nombreuses simulations du jeu sur des instruments acoustiques mêlant arpèges et sons Mega Voices. De plus, de nombreux nouveaux arpèges comprennent les modifications utilisées dans les synthétiseurs mythiques, comme le panoramique ou le filtrage modulés selon l'horloge MIDI. 1248 arpèges de synthétiseurs, batteries, percussions et finals ont été ajoutés à ceux du MOTIF XS pour un total de 7881 !

In performance mode, you can layer up to four Voices, and you can split the keyboard into 4 zones with different key ranges and velocity windows. Also, you can create music quickly by using the arpeggiator on the different Voices. The MOTIF XF interactive real time arpeggio engine lets you run 4 different arps simultaneously and switch between 5 different variations of arpeggio patterns in real time. It’s incredibly musically interactive and many arps include chordal intelligence so they create different phrases depending on what chords are played on the keyboard.Thanks to the direct performance recording feature, which enables you to record performances in real time to songs and patterns, you can quickly capture your song ideas sparked by the MOTIF Performances to a song or pattern for further editing and refining.

You can use the Category Search feature to quickly and easily select the Voices or performances from the MOTIF XF’s massive arsenal of sounds. All the Voices in the MOTIF are categorized by instruments and even have sub categories. So it’s easy to select Category Search, choose the category strings, the sub-category ensemble and then see all the ensemble string Voices in your system. Even third party libraries are categorized using this elegant database system. Category Search is available wherever you want to select a Voice, so when you are looking for just the right sound in a Song, access Category Search and easily browse for that perfect fit for your mix.In Performance Mode, Performances are sorted by musical genre, so you can quickly select the type of Performance that matches your moment of inspiration. The Favorites feature even lets you tag your favorites Voices and Performances so they are even easier to access.

The MOTIF XF has 128MB of internal SD-RAM. This means that you can sample external audio without installing separately purchased memory. Using the sampling feature, you can load sample Voice libraries, import WAV files or add vocals, guitars and other acoustic instruments to your MOTIF sequences.You can connect a microphone to the A/D input and sample vocals Also, if you select the slice feature during sampling, even if you change the tempo of songs and patterns, recorded audio will follow the beat with perfect synchronization. You can process your recorded samples in minute detail to produce just the right sound using a redesign sample editing UI.

The MOTIF XF features an Integrated Sampling Sequencer which allows you to combine MIDI and audio samples (driven by MIDI events), so you can create complete songs including vocals, guitars and acoustic instruments all right inside the MOTIF XF. Because the XF now features 128MB of onboard sampling RAM, you’re able to take advantage of these powerful features right away without the need to purchase external memory. The XF sequencer also lets you work the way you prefer because it features two different sequence modes. There is a linear tape machine-style, 16-track Song sequencer for recording and punching in and out as you would on a tape machine-style DAW interface. It also includes a 16-track Pattern sequencer that lets you work in loops and build up sections of your song (verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) and chain those sections together into complete song structures. You can easily move your production back and further between song and pattern modes depending on your needs. With the bundled Cubase AI software, you can even import completed Songs directly in Cubase including all the audio samples for further editing and mastering.• Integrated Sampling SequencerWith the Integrated Sampling Sequencer, you can integrate audio (sampled) data and MIDI data seamlessly. WAV/AIFF loading is also supported. You can use the time slice feature to slice the sampled sounds that you load and control them in the same way that you would control MIDI data. For example, you can synchronize audio data to the same BPM as MIDI sequence data. Also, by presetting the tempo, time signature, necessary number of measures, and number of beats, you can smoothly perform trimming and easily create perfect audio loops. Also, you can use a variety of editing commands to modify your samples. The MOTIF XF supports features such as time stretching, in which the sample length is changed while the pitch remains the same; pitch shifting, in which the pitch is changed while the length of the sample remains the same; and loop remixing which instantly creates new musical variations of looped grooves. In addition, there is a resampling feature that you can use to record the performance of the MOTIF XF as a single audio sample.

Features such as remote control (which you can use to remotely control the parameters of a DAW application on a computer from the MOTIF), various DAW templates, and simple setup features make the MOTIF XF easy to use. In particular, the integration between the MOTIF XF and Steinberg’s Cubase 5 series is truly seamless.Using the Yamaha MOTIF XF Editor, you can make subtle Voice edits from your computer while checking them visually. Because the communication between the MOTIF and the editor is bi-directional, whether you’re moving the knobs on the MOTIF or changing parameters with the mouse in the editor, the parameters are perfectly matched. There is even a VST3 editor for use in Cubase 5 (including AI) which lets you use your MOTIF as a VST soft synth.If you install the optional FW16E FireWire expansion board, you can record 16 tracks of audio data to the DAW software through the audio interface. After you install the necessary drivers (AI driver, extensions for Steinberg DAW), connect the MOTIF XF to a computer using an IEEE 1394 cable, and start Cubase AI. It identifies the MOTIF XF’s audio I/O and multi-sound source immediately, and all you have to do to start working is select a MOTIF XF project template.

Le MOTIF XF comporte un séquenceur intégré qui permet de combiner des informations MIDI et des échantillons audio (pilotés par des événements MIDI), et de créer ainsi des morceaux complets incluant voix, guitares et instruments acoustiques directement avec le MOTIF XF. Les 128 Mo de mémoire intégrée permettent de tirer parti très rapidement de ces possibilités. Le séquenceur vous permet de travailler dans deux modes différents. Le mode linéaire Song à 16 pistes permet un enregistrement comme sur une bande ou un séquenceur logiciel, avec enregistrement à la volée ou en pas à pas. Le mode Pattern, à 16 pistes également, permet de construire des boucles et d'enchaîner les sections (couplet, refrain, etc.) pour créer la structure complète d'un morceau. Bien entendu, vous pouvez passer facilement d'un mode à l'autre. Par ailleurs, avec le logiciel Cubase AI fourni, vous pouvez même importer directement vos morceaux complets au format Song, échantillons inclus. Le chargement de fichiers audio directement dans le séquenceur ISS est possible, l'utilisation de la fonction Slice permet de contrôler ceux-ci de manière précise. La signature rythmique, le tempo, le nombre de mesures peuvent être programmés, il est ainsi très facile de créer des boucles parfaites. Le Motif XF comporte également une fonction d'ajustement temporel (Time Stretch), où la durée d'un échantillon est modifiée sans action sur la hauteur, et une fonction de modification de hauteur (Pitch Shift) également. Par ailleurs, Loop Remix créé instantanément de nouvelles variations musicales de vos boucles. Enfin, vous pouvez utiliser le mode Resample pour enregistrer directement votre performance en audio, et la traiter comme un échantillon utilisateur.

Une interface utilisateur améliorée avec de nombreuses fonctions demandées par les utilisateurs comme l'édition de Drum Kits en Mixing, l'Auto Mapping des échantillons (v 1.10 nécessaire), le Tap Tempo ou l'interface personnalisable.