Hello everybody,

I have done quite an mount of searching and got the answer to a couple of questions, but I’m still a bit stuck.

I using Logic Pro 9 on a Macbook Pro as a sequencer for controlling a classic Motif Rack which is connected via an 8x8 Midi-Interface (not USB).

Now I have installed the PLG board in slot 1 and in voice-mode I can select the board and by using shift i can switch between the banks.  In multi mode i can see that it’s after 1/5/9/13 I have “P1” which is the board. 
The USR bank on the board is empty and I read here that it’s necessary to copy them using a midi-file on my external sequencer?  Is this midi-file somewhere downloadable? It’s not on the “tools"-CD that was with it and I do have a floppy disk.. but not on my MAC (or any other PC that I could check on).
Is it then (after copying the voices to the USR location) sufficient to set up MSB/LSB 63/24 in Logic to select the voices, or do I need to do anything else?  When playing around and using the banks in the manual (81/97 and 112) I also heard that another voice (not the board but from the regular motif rack) was playing simultaneously?

Next, the Editor that’s on the CD does not work on OSX anymore, but when i look at the Yamaha site (or here in the downloads) I don’t see any anymore. Is there any way to edit the voices on this board under OSX?

thanks a lot
Chris

There is no OSX editor for any of the PLG boards, Windows only.

The VL editor can be used for loading the user bank if you either have a WinPC or run Windows on your Mac (BootCamp, VMWare, etc.).

To be honest, when I owned my ES and wanted to use the PLG boards I just bought the cheapest Windows laptop I could find just to run the editors. 

Is it tsufficient to set up MSB/LSB 63/24 in Logic to select the voices, or do I need to do anything else?  When playing around and using the banks in the manual (81/97 and 112) I also heard that another voice (not the board but from the regular motif rack) was playing simultaneously?

Were you in voice mode or multi mode?  In voice mode that should work fine, in multi mode it’s possible to set up a PLG board to the same MIDI channel as a rack voice. When I had my ES, this used to drive me nuts every time I set up a new sequence I’d get both the PLG voice and the ES grand piano playing. Go back and reread the manual about multi mode to see the details on this.

If you use USB for MIDI (which you said you do not) the PLG boards can be on a separate MIDI port, giving you more than 16 MIDI channels and no layering with the rack voices.

Hope this helps.

Hi, and thank you for this information.

Having to use another computer is of course nowhere close to optimal, but if there’s no way around it, then i guess that’s just the way I have to go..

To the second question: yes, I was in multi-mode when I observed this behavior.. voice mode was fine, but that’s not really useful for me..
I have gone through the manual a couple of times, however couldn’t really figure this out.

I know that I can see more ports in logic when connecting the rack via USB (tested this once), however I never tried using these other ports.. maybe I will look into this.

Either way, thanks a lot for your help

There are 16 MIDI channels per PORT.
If you are in MULTI mode, normally internal PARTS occupy the 16 MIDI channels: PART 1 = CH1, PART 2 = CH2, PART 3 = CH3 and so on.

The PLG SLOTS 1, 2 and 3 will share MIDI channels with PARTS 1, 2 and 3. SHARE = LAYERED

If you would like to use the PLG-boards on their own discreet MIDI channel you have two choices:
1) Turn the internal PART’s MIDI channel to OFF for the corresponding PLG PART
2) set the PLG boards on PORT 2

By setting your PLG 150 Boards on PORT 2, they now have their own discreet MIDI channel assignment. This works because PORT 2, MIDI channel 1 is totally separate/discreet from PORT 1, MIDI channel 1

So by setting your PLG150 Boards to PORT 2 you have added a 17th, and 18th PART to you MULTI
When you change the PORT of the PLG150 boardds - if you have two they both change to PORT 2 and SLOT 1 defaults to Channel 1, SLOT 2 defaults to Channel 2

All PLG150 series boards are single PART boards so will only occupy a single MIDI channel of PORT 2.

Press [UTILITY]
PAGE [>] to the PLG Board parameters
Set PORT NO. = 2

I should mention you must be connected to the Motif-Rack via USB in order to use the multiple Port function.
This requires the Yamaha USB-MIDI Driver for your particular computer’s OS.