Hey guys

I’m in a band and I primarily sing and play guitar, but I play piano in a couple or more songs. I and an OLD, but good, Roland keyboard, but as it was big, heavy and outdated in sounds, I sold it and got what I thought would be the best piano sound in its price range, the MX61.

It just arrived friday and I had little time to play so far, but the piano sound seems just fine to me. The keys also feel very nice. The only not so great part about the MX seems to be the plastic and the output, but I guess that’s what you can expect for its price.

Anyway...I’m really out of touch regarding synths. I just wanted something with a great piano to start with and a bunch of other stuff I might grow into. I read the manual and I’m kinda lost or confused in some areas and would need some help clarifying things.

1 - I know “voices” refers to all the sounds the keyboard has, but the “parts” and “performances” confuse me. Can someone explain me those 2 like I’m really stupid!?

2 - Lets say I use a piano in a song, and at some point I need a piano+string or some other voice, and in the next song I need some other voice...how to I do that? How can I quick and easily go to the voices I need?

3 - I’ve read the posts here about the the low output. I tried increasing the gain on the EQ and it made a big difference, though I had some noise afterwards when playing loud, but I’m NOT sure if it was just my headphones. Anyway, increasing the EQ gain doesn’t seem like the best way to increase output. I’ve yet to try the Melas Editor. Still...If by any chance I screw something up with an editor, can I get it back to factory standar? How?

I guess that’s about it for now...hope you can share your light with me :)

Parts and performances are where you save your custom voices for quick access. Each part holds one voice and the MX has up to 16 parts per performance with up to 128 performances. A performance is simply a set of 16 parts.

Part 10 of a performance is unique and can be used in conjunction with the play button to play a backing rhythm pattern as you play the other parts.

When you want to setup for a few songs, you set the voices you want into the parts of a performance and when it comes time to switch, all you have to do is press the select button and jog the AI Knob to the correct one. Normally you have quick access to parts 1 and 2. To get to the others, 3 to 16, press the part select button then press the left or right arrow keys. You can also have those other parts play with a midi file on a USB stick or from another midi source such as a DAW.

On the volume, I would recommend Melas software. Changing the voice volume was what did the trick and allowed me to drop the EQ to default. I think it sounds much better this way. Be sure to check all the volumes, master (utility settings), part, common etc. as well.

The factory reset is under the utility options menu (press the utility button then the job button) and it will restore everything to how it was when you first opened the box. This will wipe out any custom voices and performances so be sure to save any that you want to keep.

On 2 – having a Performance that groups your favs together for a set is probably the way to go as suggested by Synthetic. Depending on the voices you use you may have to use several Performances – one of the limitations of the MX is that you can only have up to 4 insert effects in a performance, so if you build up a performance that has more than 4 parts that would benefit from and insert fx, then you would need to create several performances.

On the volume, I don’t have the Melas tools yet, although I do plan to get them – I have had them for my Motif ES6 and found them to come in really handy at times.  But, in my explorations of the MX factory performances, what I noticed was that in quite a few of them, the Part volumes of Parts 1 & 2 were not necessarily maxed out. Not sure why they did this, but I suspect it’s because they set the performances as 16-part multitimbral so that all 16 voices would be balanced in a song, such as with the demos that come with the MX. So if some other part is “naturally” softer, they had to keep Parts 1 & 2 lower.  That’s probably not something you care about during a live gig, where you want the 1 or 2 voices you use in layer to be balanced between them, but as loud as possible.  So if Parts 1 or 2 are sitting at ~100, or less, they will be considerably quieter. Not sure how many decibels this would translate to, but 27 midi volume units is 20%+ of the volume range. Of course, you can have more than just 2-Part layers, up to 16 if you want, although you’ll probably limit them to 4-Parts, so that each part can have it’s own insert effect. Anyway, incearing the Part volumes as close to 127 as possible (while keeping the porper balance between parts) made a big difference in the volume.

I also just picked up my MX61 a week ago. I spent one afternoon creating my own gig-ready performances.  I took the then tack of dedicating one Performance per “sound” (e.g., “My Huge Lead”, “Big Strings”, “Super Organ”). Each one is generally a 4-part layer*. I then switch from one performance to the other for different songs, or different sounds within a song, rather than selecting different parts within a Performance.  I also found a nifty shortcut to get to performances quickly by using the Shift key. So, I saved my favs in the first 16 performances. Now I can use Shift + a part button to get to the corresponding performance directly.

*To create multi-part layers (more than 2), you will need to use the free mycromx Performance editor, to set each part to the same midi channel .

YAMAHA MX-speak for beginners

A VOICE = one musician/instrument. A single sound like a piano, or flute
A PERFORMANCE = a band or group of musicians all recalled at once, and accessible via the PART SELECT 1-16 buttons

We say the MX is 16-PART multi-timbral… A PART is one of the 16 musicians you recall when you recall a Performance.

The BEATLES was a band with 4 PARTS.

Call up the very first PERFORMANCE 001: MX CATEGORY
On the right front panel find and press the [PART SELECT] button
Now when that is lit, button [1] is Concert Grand
Button [2] is Amb Pizza (Ambient Pizzacato)
Button [3] is Over the Top (lead guitar )
Etc.

In a Performance place your favorite 16 Voices ... One per PART, you can quickly and easily switch between instrument’s (Voices) using the numbered PART buttons. You can even hold(sustain) a sound, switch to another while still holding the first sound… Seamless transitioning between all 16 Voices.

And finally, you can’t screw things up, because the instrument can be quickly reset using the FACTORY RESET command… So have at it, it is not possible to mess things up beyond repair… Well, not by experimenting.

:-)

Thanks people

I had my first rehearsal yesterday with the MX61. The output wasn’t as low as I anticipated, though I was getting noise from the system. I was connected with just 1 jack cable to the left channel and there was a buzzing noise going to the PA...any thoughts on that??

pugdealer - 18 June 2013 03:48 AM

Thanks people

I had my first rehearsal yesterday with the MX61. The output wasn’t as low as I anticipated, though I was getting noise from the system. I was connected with just 1 jack cable to the left channel and there was a buzzing noise going to the PA...any thoughts on that??

I have used it that way (single output on Left) and getting really clean sound, even at very loud volumes. It sounds like you may have a ground loop between the keyboard and the mixer?

AlKal - 18 June 2013 05:29 AM

pugdealer - 18 June 2013 03:48 AM

Thanks people

I had my first rehearsal yesterday with the MX61. The output wasn’t as low as I anticipated, though I was getting noise from the system. I was connected with just 1 jack cable to the left channel and there was a buzzing noise going to the PA...any thoughts on that??

I have used it that way (single output on Left) and getting really clean sound, even at very loud volumes. It sounds like you may have a ground loop between the keyboard and the mixer?

What’s a ground loop? How do I fix it?

pugdealer - 19 June 2013 03:38 AM

What’s a ground loop? How do I fix it?

Make sure keyboard and mixer have a common ground. Plug all equipment to the same power source.