Does anyone know how to go about reversing a piano sound?

XS has different play modes for samples.

loop
Sample playback begins from the Start point, continues to the Loop
point, then repeats indefinitely between the Loop point and End point.
This setting is useful for short rhythmic passages, riffs and beats that
you want to play back repeatedly and continuously.

one shot
The Sample plays back one time from Start point to End point. This
setting can be used for solos, sound effects and vocal passages that
are used once without looping.

reverse
The Sample plays back one time in reverse from End point to Start
point. This is useful for creating reversed cymbal sounds and other
special effects.

/M

Is it possible to take a preexisting sample, already on the keyboard, and reverse the waveform?

If so, how? and what operating mode is it found under?

(Probably integrated sampling or some obscure tab in the edit mode, if its possible at all)

Yes, you can use Integrated Sampling to reverse any sound you are able to create in the XS.

First of all, you need DIMMs installed.

Next, check this article about sampling (there’s also lots of info and instructions in the XS Owners Manual).

http://www.motifator.com/index.php/support/view/sampling_basics_and_navigation_on_the_motif_xs

/M

User samples can be set to the following PLAY MODES:
one shot = plays forward once
reverse = plays backwards once
loop = plays from start to end goes back to loop point and repeats to end over and over

You can resample a chord or phrase (making a USER sample) and then just reverse the playback - this is not difficult to do.

Preset samples cannot be reversed (or otherwise changed) while in ROM (read only memory).

Preset Waveforms are provided for many, many sounds (2670 preset waveforms) however a set of reversed piano waveforms were not provided (limited usefulness musically speaking).

That said, for this type of special effect we recommend you spend some time with the EFFECT processors in the Motif XS. One of the algorithms in the MISCELLANEOUS category of the powerful INSERTION EFFECTS is “Early Reflection”. This is a special area of reverberation where you can program the sound as it initially reflects off of a surface. If you can imagine a musical sound (or any sound for that matter) heading toward a surface like a wall, as it impacts and bounces back you have a situation where that attack portion, then the body portion and then finally the end of the wave strikes the surface and reflects back. This algortihm isolates the very first reflected sound off of the barrier surface and allows you to manipulate it.

This effect algorithm comes with several “PRESETS” (many of your EFFECT TYPES come with various Presets - these are provided to help musicians who are not recording engineers have a good variety of starting points when programming effects)… among these Presets you will find a setup to start experimenting with “REVERSE” TYPE

With this set to DRY/WET so that “D < W63”
that is, 100% Wet, you can easily setup an Insertion Effect that gives you a reversed piano sound.

You have plenty of parameters to tweak to get the kind of reversed piano effect you may be looking for - try out the other PRESETS, particularly the GATES, which can be edited so that the reflection is “reverse” - the GATE will give you an aburpt close to the sound when released. Anyway try your hand at programming a reverse effect and see what you come up with.

Hope that helps.