hello all ..my 1st post..YEA!!!!!!!!.. here it goes..my friend in the band has a motif xs7 and es8..i think thats what they are..when we play and switchs to a new sound..how can we get the volume to be the same on all his sounds? hope u all understand what im trying to say..also he has a vocal harminizer hooked up ..when he changes to new sound the harminizer also changes settings..i set the harmonizer mcc to none is what tech said but he didn’t know how to set up the motifs...thxs for any and all help..ROCK ON!!!!!

Re: help!! need same volume...

Welcome to the forum.

There is no magic pill here, matching volumes is going to be a very subjective thing. Some Voices will be buried in the band depending on the instrumentation of the band. So volume (the perception of how loud) is always going to be influenced by what else is going on. If the Motif XS and ES where the only instrument playing - even then certain instrument sounds (VOICES) will be softer than others. You do not expect the Flute Voice to be as loud as the OverDrive Organ Voice…

So setting and matching Volumes is something that should be worked out in rehearsal. One tip though, if you are set at maximum volume you have no where to go but down. In general it is better to have more power than you use (always).

Many keyboard players bring a knife to a gun fight. This old saying from some movie is akin to showing up with 60 Watts for your keyboards when the guitar player and the bass player each have well over 100 Watts. The most asked question is: how come the keyboards are getting drowned out?

Well, if the guitar player - (somewhere in the guitar player’s handbook of musicianship it says to turn all the way up, all the time, and be THAT guy) - but if the guitar player would only turn down, you might have chance… but don’t count on it.

Keyboard players of the world unite… get yourself a high quality sound system (something that remains clean when cranked up loud)… something with power in reserve. If your system sounds like it is struggling - you are in trouble. There is nothing like a loud and clean sound system. This versus: loud and sounding like it is on the edge of falling apart… guitar players like that overdriven thing edgy thing… keyboard players, not so much. Because you might have to do something subtle like strings at some point.

During rehearsal you have to adjust the sounds you are going to use so that they match your situation. This must be done on a per song basis. In the XS and ES plenty of room was left for you EDIT Voices; to turn them UP or DOWN…

If in VOICE mode on the XS
Press [EDIT]
Press [COMMON EDIT]
Press [F1] GENERAL
Press [SF2] PLAY MODE
here you can adjust the overal VOLUME of the VOICE 1-127
Store your edited version to one of your USER bank locations.

Rinse and repeat for each VOICE you are going to use at the gig… balancing the volumes as best you can during rehearsal. But do this during rehearsal where you can get an idea of what is what.

Then when on stage you should set your normal master volume slider about 3/4 of the way up - so that you have room, not only to move UP but to turn DOWN. 

Hope that helps.

Re: help!! need same volume...

ty,ty,ty...this place is way better than calling yamaha tech..thxs a bunch ..  ROCK ON!!!!

Re: help!! need same volume...

My band had this same problem.  Voices in PATTERN or SONG mode were not as loud as VOICE mode.  Since we use all aspects of Motif in different songs in the band; some songs, we paying along to SONG mode, others a chained PATTERN, others PERFORMANCE, and others, single voices.  Some Voices are inherently louder (synths, horns, etc) than others.  I created a Pattern file called “SINGLE VOICES” to allow me to adjust volumes of voices, so they were all relatively the same volume.  Helped a lot for us.