The new XSpanded sounds are great! However, while we have lots of new normal voices to use, there aren’t any new drum voices. It was great that we got some new Hip-Hop drums when moving from the ES to the XS, but, in a large way, it seems like the drum sounds are an area on the Motif that has hardly changed as Motif has grown. I know that there are chopped loops in the XSpanded bank, but I’m talking about kits, since those will integrate best with all of the built-in arpeggios and other drum functions.

The acoustic kits in the Motif now are spectacular for built-in drums on a keyboard, but it would be nice to have some new multisamples for use as an alternative. Just like the new guitar multisamples make it possible to get new tones that weren’t possible by just using EQ and effects on the built-in guitars, it would be nice to have new acoustic drum samples.

Also, I think that the electronic drums in the Motif are becoming quite old. Most of those kits haven’t changed since the classic. Excluding TR808 kits, they certainly don’t sound like what’s on the radio. I think that what is in the Motif XS in the way of electronic drums has value, but the XS needs more modern electronic drum kits. Maybe Yamaha could license some material from the people at ModernBeats.com or GotchaNoddin.com. I own several of those libraries, and have built up my own Motif drum kits from the samples.

If Yamaha decides to create or license additional drum sounds, then perhaps they could also include some additional fx kits, also? For example, it would be nice to have a brass bits/stabs kit for older Hip-Hop, a vocal one-shots kit, and more ethnic percussion.

What sort of drums would other people like to hear on the XS?

Thanks again for the XSpanded banks!

I agree, it would be cool to have some fresh hip-hop kits, you might wanna get that free download of 4 drum kits that was posted like a week ago. They were Kontakt sampled drum kits put into Motif format and they knocked HARD! I am hoping that some of the new DCP Emu stuff will have some good drums too since the old mophatt/proteus units always had great drum and percussion stuff. That, and like u said vocal, and horn/guitar stabs are only thing keeping motif from being totally self-contained unit.

I’d get that just for the arps and patterns.

The E-Mu stuff could be good, but it will definitely be retro. The percussion, stabs, and other single shot effects are nice, but the drums won’t be that useful unless New Jack Swing makes a comeback *smile*.

There is MoSchool II as a source for electronic drums, but, with respect to Dave for his obvious skills, most of the drums in MoSchool sound like he resampled Motif drums through effects. Of course, most modern electronic drums are produced by heavily processing natural sounds through effects, but, for me, when I listen to the MoSchool drums, I just hear the same Motif drum samples that I’ve been hearing for years, sent through EQ and effects. Dave is a very smart guy whenit comes to making instrument voices, but I don’t think that he has a good ear for what sounds good in modern electronic styles. He seems to be much more of an expert when it comes to vintage synth and classic rock sounds.

Oh well. If I have to make any voice content for myself on the XS, the easiest to make are my own drum kits. Can always sample from my computer-based libraries.

Bsmart, I’m offended! (not really...just joking).

The drums in MoSkool 2 are a mixture of some new samples I made from various sources, and the internal ROM samples. I didn’t re-sample anything, I did a lot of creative editing with respect to the drum kits. The Mo Skool 2 “instant audio loops” were created in Digital Performer using a huge variety of sources, both hardware and software.

That said, Mo Skool 2 isn’t a library dedicated to electronic drum sounds. It’s urban, lo-fi, and hip-hop/rap oriented. However, it
can certainly be used for electronic beats. Take any of the “instant beat” voices, such as User 3 Voice 4, and twist the assignable knobs or hit the assignable function switches. That will
give you an idea of some of the things you can do with the sounds in the library.

Electronic beats, sounds, and grooves will be the focus of the
“Liquid Circuits” library which is coming later this year.

Hi Dave.

I’m not after some sort of electro sound. I’m after urban radio. What I’m saying is that the MS2 drums, regardless of how they were made, (1) still sound like processed Motif samples, and (2) do not sound like what is on urban radio now or since 2000. I’m not even sure they sound like older hip-hop, since most drums for old hip-hop are chopped from vinyl, and so have vinyl noise, and are colored by lots of parametric EQ.

For modern urban radio, listen to the drums in this clip of a ModernBeats library that was produced in 2004:
http://modernbeats.com/demos/Neptunian1 Demo.mp3

Or this one, that was produced recently:
http://www.modernbeats.com/demos/BassElementz1-Demo.mp3

or this one:
http://www.modernbeats.com/demos/RnBKeyzChopz1-Demo.mp3

Maybe this just isn’t your genre, or you weren’t trying to sound contemporary. These are the electronic drum sounds that I think that the Motif is lacking, though.

What I do to make drums like this is to buy libraries from places like ModernBeats, extract the samples, load them up one-by-one, and build them in to Motif drum kits. That’s fine for me, but it isn’t really legal for me to share these creations with other people, since they’re made from samples that are commercial. People ask me where they can get drums like this for the Motif, but I have to tell them that they’ll need to download libraries, and start sampling and programming kits. That’s really unfortunate, when those people would rather be focused on creating music instead of programming kits, but I don’t know of an alternative. Perhaps someone like you can create sounds from scratch that could be used as source material for kits like these?

Have to respectfully disagree with you about the references you gave. You can easily get “there” with what’s in MoSkool 2. Perhaps the demos don’t currently reflect that (some new demos are on the way) but trying to keep up with what’s “current” in urban music is impossible to do, because what is “current” is already “old”. The demos you posted sound “old” already to me - frankly, they incorporate things like snares with the attacks removed, and “hard” dance kicks with very little low end, layered with sub-kicks, along with what are obviously “acoustic” drumkit sounds. That stuff is already in the Motif XS.

Since production IS the focus in urban/hip-hop/techno/dance and other “beat” based music, producers are constantly trying to find what’s “fresh” and what sounds will serve as the hooks. But as soon as I or you or someone else imitates those “fresh” sounds, they’re once again “stale”.

Experience has taught me that people will search through 500 new kicks and new snares, tap each one once, come to the end of them and say “I can’t find what I’m looking for”. That’s largely because they are playing the sounds in isolation, not in the context of a track.

MoSkool2 (and even Studio Drums) are designed as resources to provide you with the building blocks to come up with your own creative ideas. It can be as simple as re-pitching a kick way up, or cutting the low-end off of a snare using the hi-pass filter until it just sounds like a “sliver” of a snare.

But as I said, there will be more new drum samples, grooves, and rhythmic elements in “Liquid Circuits”.

I’ll second mobetta518 on the free kits I posted a few weeks ago...If you haven’t got them yet, I would highly recommend them for this genre...There’s 3 electronic kits and 1 acoustic....Not a huge selection but still very usable...ZR

From Yamaha US:

Here are a few things that we have already started.

Ethnic bank- This combines the XSpeditions demo sounds from Digital Sound Factory with completely new Sitars, Ouds, Indian Percussion Kit, World Percussion Kit and Latin Percussion kits from Yamaha.

New Drums and FX- A new Yamaha Oak Kit and a new Power Kit along with a number of HipHop/ Electonica kits. We’ll probably put the Percussion kits listed above in this Drum Bank as well. Drum Kits are easy to deal with as you simply can load the individual User Drum Voice you want to use and the XS will load all the samples needed.

Misc. Keyboards

Finally we will collecting up and putting together a Bank with some new organs, some of the Pianos, Organs and EPs from the Players Bank from the ES.

There is much more stuff coming from Digital Sound Factory and many of their commercial releases will also have a free downloadable demo Bank as well.