Hi all, I recently bought a used Yamaha Motif Rack Classic.  I have tried to use several controllers, but with each one I have not figured out, or not been able to select my chosen sounds from the controller itself.

what i want to do is have three keyboard controllers coming out of my motif rack. i want to simply click a button on each keyboard to select the sound I want.  As i have it, i’m using a roland 88 key controller and two Alesis 41 keys. its not really integrating well.

What do i need in order to do what I’m trying to do? What is the Best Controller to be used with the Rack Classic.  I do not have big money to spend here, so please don’t advise me to just buy a more recent model, thats not going to happen at this stage.

I know many people will tell me to search forums. I am dislexic and not midi saavy. I have been trying to do that for months, its not happening.

Thanks so much if you respond with some clear simple intel…

Best,
Ariel Elisha

Hi!

To be honest I don’t have the Motif Rack or any other hardware modules (I use VSTs but want to switch to hardware soon) but as people wrote on various forums, its best to keep things simple. I was advised not to load the Motif Rack with too much MIDI data and it seems your ‘3 keyboards to 1 Motif Rack’ approach is a bit too much for it.

Let me explain you my future setup for my upcoming band, I think it would work for you.

One master controller (like your 88 key Roland) is connected to the sound module, that is for playing the keyboards in the traditional way, so piano parts, solos, synths, pads etc.

Beside it I’d use a cheaper laptop running Ableton Live Lite for playing back those parts of a song that I can’t play myself. You can get the trial version from here:

http://www.ableton.com/free-trial

I’d get a small keyboard (like your 41 key Alesis or even smaller) hooked up to this laptop. If your Alesises don’t have a USB port you will need a USB-to-MIDI interface for around $20-30 or maybe it’s better to sell both of them and getting something like the Akai MPK Mini which has USB connection. Also for better sound quality you should get an external audio interface instead of the very basic built-in one. The Focusrite Saffire 6 USB got quite good reviews and it comes with Ableton Live 7 Lite (a bit older but basically the same as version 8) and it’s around $200 new or around 100-150 from ebay.

Finally I’d plug the sound module and the laptop into a smaller mixer (the Behringer Xenyx 502 is said to be a great choice for the money, its around $45-50) and this mixer to the main mixer of the band.

I hope it’ll be helpful :)