In the Owner’s Manual on page 30 are instructions titled Creating a New Performance Using Your Favorite Voice.

I followed the instructions and created a 4-layer voice. Up to that point the LCD said “New Performance” (step #4)

Step #5 states:

“Press the [Store] button to store the settings as a Performance.”

However, as the image of the LCD shows, you are in a menu but you do not have an option to name this Performance. The only thing you seem to be able to do is use one of the existing performances that are pre-stored from the factory. This does not make sense. How is this “creating a new performance” if you cannot name it with something unique? I do not have any of the existing performances memorized. I do not know which of the existing performances I don’t care about losing by writing over them.

Why isn’t there any empty performance space for new performances to be saved?

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Also, on page 34 Recording in the Performance Mode, if you follow those instructions after creating a new performance combined with a drum layer (these are the sections in sequence) even though you start with the LCD reading “New Performance” and the keys generating the voice you have just created the results combine with the first pre-stored Performance. The instructions only work if you start from scratch. Step #1 is selecting one of the pre-stored performances. How do you work with your own material?

The Owner’s Manual appears to be a series of separate instructions and does not explain weaving everything together. Each section only gets you so far then you start from scratch working from nothing on another section. There are missing pieces of essential information.

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The logical and practical way to record would be to pull up a voice and hit Record. Options would stem from there. Instead going into Record mode takes your current settings away and you must construct everything through a series of screens and menus. If you are noodling with the keyboard and coming up with things to keep for potential later development is it possible to record these on the fly? The Owner’s Manual suggests doing that but does not explain how this is done in an applicable chain of steps.

One thing you should know before you start.  Your lucid, intelligent Writing shows that you are far more intelligent than anyone who has or ever will write a manual.  The only thing I can think of is to look in the yamaha mox manual that has all the block logic diagrams.  That probably would give you the answer or Burts Youtube video on creating performances.

How is this “creating a new performance” if you cannot name it with something unique?

While you are editing your PERFORMANCE you can NAME it:
Press [COMMON]
A Performance NAME is going to a be an EDIT parameter shared in “common” with all the PARTS together so it makes sense that “NAME” would be a COMMON parameter. And as you might have guessed, it is the very first COMMON EDIT parameter:

Press [F1] GENERAL
Press [SF1] NAME
(see page 59 of the MOX6/MOX8 Reference Manual)
(for details on how to navigate the “NAME” function see “Naming (inputting characters)” on page 21 of the MOX6/MOX8 Owner’s Manual)

Why isn’t there any empty performance space for new performances to be saved?

Because PERFORMANCES are all USER locations made from the permanent PRESET VOICES, so you can restore any or all of the PERFORMANCES from an ALL data file (.X4A) by using the LOAD TYPE = PERFORMANCE. Even if you were to overwrite one of them, which is what you must do if you want to KEEP your creation, you can always restore it quickly and easily by loading it back in. (Also, as I’ll explain below, the PERFORMANCE CREATOR can be used without having to [STORE], without having to overwrite any of your current USER PERFORMANCES)

There are many PERFORMANCES that are simply there as instructional examples of what can be done. You cannot possibly like them all. If you have not yet played through the PERFORMANCEs we recommend you do so. When you do, you will figure out what I mentioned above (you cannot possibly like them all). A PERFORMANCE is designed to be customized, changed, overwritten. You’ll find some worthy of overwriting. To answer the question, though - leaving empty locations is typically more frustrating for users (we have tried it both ways). When we fill them we get one or two complaints, like yours. When you do not fill them, we get 50 times as many complaints about when are we going fill them up and how people feel cheated - “couldn’t you give us more and we can delete the ones we don’t like”. So we fill them up!

Remember: All PERFORMANCES are made from the permanent PRESET VOICES. They are simply combinations of the VOICES you cannot lose.
However, when it comes to USER VOICES, all USER VOICE locations are for YOU to store your own custom creations - the VOICES you find in the USER banks, initially, are simply repeats of PRESET VOICES. they are simply “placeholders” - feel free to overwrite them as you require.

Make a BACK UP file of the Factory Set - this way you can selectively restore any data that you may think you want to restore. Or, of course, you can do a FACTORY SET (reset) which returns the MOX6/MOX8 to out-of-the-box condition. Either way it is always a good idea to make an ALL data file (.X4A) that contains your MO-X data, be it the Facotry Set or your own custom data - simply because it prevents you from having the feeling that you overwrote something important. That feeling completely goes away when you know you have a back up! :-)

The instructions only work if you start from scratch. Step #1 is selecting one of the pre-stored performances. How do you work with your own material?

Step #1 will still be selecting one of the USER PERFORMANCES
Next, press [JOB]
Press [F1] INIT
Select “ALL” if you want to start “from scratch”
Press [ENTER] to execute.
This will create a NEW PERFORMANCE with just a single VOICE: 001(A01) in PART 1. You can then build your PERFORMANCE from there.

Or if you follow the “PERFORMANCE CREATOR” guide you can start in VOICE mode with your Favorite VOICE (and it does the initialization from your selected VOICE)!

The logical and practical way to record would be to pull up a voice and hit Record. Options would stem from there. Instead going into Record mode takes your current settings away and you must construct everything through a series of screens and menus. If you are noodling with the keyboard and coming up with things to keep for potential later development is it possible to record these on the fly?

It may be “the logical and practical way” for you… However, when you do not yet fully understand the synthesizer it may appear to be the only logical and practical way - but it is not the only way. It simply is handled in a different manner.

For several reasons: 1) the sequencer records MIDI data not audio data. Some things about the VOICE must necessarily change when you move it from VOICE mode to one of the sequencer modes, [SONG] or [PATTERN]. 
2) Recording can be done directly from PERFORMANCE mode _ the name “Performance”, includes the root word “perform” and IS, we hope you’ll find, not only the most logical and most practical way (according to the designers of this synth) but the most musical way to get your “noodling with keyboard” into the sequencer. “Noodling” is a kind of practice performing. (please see part two below)

Part two:

Here’s how it works:
Build a PERFORMANCE using the VOICE you want to noodle with. Here’s how quick and easy this would be using what Yamaha has worked out (by the way: based on extensive research - you’ll have to trust me on this).

Call up the VOICE you want to “noodle with”
It is your choice (but it has been our observation that when musicians ‘noodle’ with a sound, they often would prefer to do so with a basic Drum Groove, more so than with just a metronome) but press the [DRUM ASSIGN] button in the PERFORMANCE CREATOR.

This will immediately initialize a NEW PERFORMANCE, and allow you to select a DRUM KIT which it places in PART 4 (the lighted front panel buttons will indicate that you are now in PERFORMANCE mode, PART 4 is selected and you are editing it) your originally selected VOICE is in PART 1. Each DRUM KIT is already associated with arpeggios accessible via the [SF1]-[SF6] buttons, the ARPS generally match the Kit by name - By this I mean if you are doing a ROCK thing, call up a ROCK KIT. If you are doing a HIP HOP thing, call up a HIP HOP KIT. If you are doing a JAZZ thing, call up a JAZZ KIT and so on. This is a quick easy way to find a basic drum groove to “noodle” along with. Each Drum kit has multiple arpeggio patterns associated with it [SF1]-[SF6]. You can adjust the feel and attitude of the Drum ARPS using the ARP PLAY FX (later you can refine or even completely redo the drums - this is just to “noodle”...)
Press [ENTER] to select your KIT
Press [ENTER] again to return to the “NEW PERFORMANCE” screen.

You can use the TAP TEMPO function to set the TEMPO you like or you can press [SHIFT] + [ARPEGGIO ON/OFF] to go directly to the TEMPO parameter.

And you do not even have to STORE this PERFORMANCE (so there is nothing you have to stress about OVERWRITING… you can immediately press the [RECORD] button and JUMP START your composition.

Recording a PERFORMANCE is as easy as [F1]-[F2]-[F3]!
Press [RECORD]
At [F1] SETUP you can do the basic SETUP, target an empty SONG (Song mode is linear so you can noodle for as long as you like). The TIME SIGNATURE is automatically set according to the ARPEGGIO type being used. The TEMPO is automatically set according to the setting in the PERFORMANCE.
At [F2] REC TR you can see the target TRACKS - since the PERFORMANCE has just PART 1 (your sound) and PART 4 (the drum kit), you can anticipate that your recording will be to tracks 1 and 4. Nothing to set here, unless you want to target other tracks.
At [F3] OTHER Set “KEY ON START” if you want the recording to begin when you touch a key. Make sure that “COPY PERFORMANCE PARAMETER” is set ON (this will ensure that all edits made to your VOICES in the PERFORMANCE mode are copied to the SONG MIXING setup exactly. And make sure that it is set to switch to RECORD target mode when you complete your noodling session… This will automatically take you to your SONG when you press STOP to end recording.

Ready… NOODLE!!!  All your playing is faithfully recorded - and not just a VOICE by itself. The “PERFORMANCE” you created has now been transferred to the SONG MIXING program - so it is not necessary for you to STORE it back in PERFORMANCE mode if you do not want to. So you don’t even have to overwrite a PERFORMANCE location!!!

If, however, you’d rather not use the drums - you can modify the above work method to not include them. But they are there if you want to use them. Try it and you may find you agree with Yamaha that this is actually a pretty cool feature - particularly for noodling around to get a basic idea into the MIDI sequencer.

The next wonderful thing is that you can later cut and paste the good parts of what you played and discard the rest.  Remember it is MIDI data (not audio) so even minor mistakes can be edited, fixed and/or adjusted.

Please try the above workflow and see if it is not inspirational. If not, and it does not work for you, get back to us, we can give you a few other methods to accomplish this same kind of thing.

Summary
Forgive us, but we think the addition of the drum groove is more on-point, more logical, more practical, and much more fun (re: musical) than what you were proposing by going directly from the VOICE mode to the (MIDI) sequencer. (What you describe is probably best dealt with utilizing the MOX6/MOX8’s ability to easily record audio via USB to a connected computer. This is where you can “record and document”, as an audio recording - it is possible to record from the MOX6/MOX8 directly to DAW from VOICE mode. Once you have your instrument and computer configured, the workflow is like this: Open your favorite DAW, create an audio track and begin to record and document. The workflow here allows you to go directly from VOICE mode to recording. The integration of the MOX6/MOX8 is going to be at work here.

And really, when you do get to this point, it is really very simple to start using MIDI recording (in the MOX6/MOX8) and at the same time work with audio tracks you have recorded/transferred/printed in your DAW. This is when you get to the point where you are not limited to 16 PART multi-timbral compositions, nor are you limited by any polyphony issues either. You render or “print” data as audio tracks in your DAW, from either “live” MO-X performing or from playback of the MO-X sequencer and/or arpeggiator or all of the above. You have a Volume control for DAW audio coming back, you have everything you need to setup a MIDI/AUDIO situation, that is hardware/software-based and a pretty awesome and flexible tool, too.

Hope that helps.

Thanks again for the detailed response.

I will work with that information today.

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Bad_Mister - 12 June 2011 08:17 AM

Why isn’t there any empty performance space for new performances to be saved?

...leaving empty locations is typically more frustrating for users (we have tried it both ways). When we fill them we get one or two complaints, like yours. When you do not fill them, we get 50 times as many complaints about when are we going fill them up and how people feel cheated - “couldn’t you give us more and we can delete the ones we don’t like”. So we fill them up!…

The complaints referred to here have to do with the organization and presentation of the operating system. This only has something to do with the number of pre-made examples shipped from the factory if Yamaha engineers design it to appear that way. I am speaking of having the ability to save and name customized data. This would be storage ability and storage space designed in the operating system. These are common concepts in digital media. These exists elsewhere in this operating system. Saving files and accessing that data does not have to look like you are filling empty spaces, or worse, filling a half-empty glass. You just need the ability to store it, the prompt to name it and for the stored data to show up when and were it is needed. The actual relationship and interaction with other data and the operating system can be invisible.

Again, thank you for the detailed response.

BTW, I would like to print out all of these in depth instructions however every attempt only prints the framework of these threads. Is it possible to print the content? I could select, copy and paste into an editor but I would like to retain the formatting.

Thanks