Some of you might have seen the invitations on a certain website to take a survey. Yamaha is claiming that survey will “help our product development team” and that “Your input influences our development for your synthesizers”.

Hoping that I could indeed influence Yamaha to consider designing a true successor to the Motif XF (rather than another Montage), I took the survey.

Don’t be fooled. The survey has nothing to do with product development - the questions all relate to marketing.

I suggest not taking the survey, since Yamaha is lying about its purpose. Of course, if you do take it, there’s nothing to stop anyone from being just as dishonest as Yamaha.

I own several Yamaha products besides my XS6 and XF6. Yamaha’s recent behavior has me considering whether I should ever purchase another of their products.

When Motifator started, back in 2001, the success of the original ‘Motif’ took Yamaha by surprise and they were genuinely not sure how to follow up on it. So we put together a survey that asked people what they liked, what they didn’t like, wanted or didn’t want on a workstation and the results can be found on what became the equally successful Motif ES. Subsequently, the ‘MO’ series was created; bearing a name that came from our self-styled Mo-Bros and Mo-Sis’s here on Motifator.com and implementing / de-implementing features that the community told Yamaha it needed or that were surplus to requirements. In fact the entire history of the Motif series was very closely aligned with feedback from this site. But this was, in almost everyone’s opinion, an extremely rare example of genuine feedback and interaction between a manufacturer and its customers. The norm, as referenced above, is the rather more cynical version.  When you consider that the Motif series has been the most successful in Keyboard/workstation history it’s sad to see people’s willingness to overlook or ignore some of the key reasons why it became so.

MM

Well said Mr. Motif.I was just stationed in South Korea and took my Motif there and found many there using the same product and hearing very good support from them. Take care.

Yamaha UK don’t even mention the Motif XF as discontinued. They do that with the MM though and it seems that this is usually done with other Yamaha products.

https://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/music_production/synthesizers/index.html

It’s as if it never existed and that doesn’t help anyone who doesn’t know that it was discontinued.

That’s interesting considering several of those products feature waveforms and voices from the Motif range.

philwoodmusic - 15 November 2017 05:32 AM

Yamaha UK don’t even mention the Motif XF as discontinued. They do that with the MM though and it seems that this is usually done with other Yamaha products. [...]

Yes, the Motif XF has just “disappeared”. I suspect that’s because the MOXF is still being sold, and is described as (emphasis added}…
”Combining a MOTIF XF sound engine and Flash memory expandability, a MIDI keyboard controller with extensive DAW and VST control, USB Audio/MIDI interfacing and onboard sequencing.”
...but that claim wouldn’t look as good to potential buyers if it was based on an obviously discontinued model. It’s another example of Yamaha being just a bit disingenuous.

MrMotif - 14 November 2017 03:02 PM

[...] In fact the entire history of the Motif series was very closely aligned with feedback from this site. But this was, in almost everyone’s opinion, an extremely rare example of genuine feedback and interaction between a manufacturer and its customers. The norm, as referenced above, is the rather more cynical version. [...]

The current survey certainly does show cynicism, but perhaps Yamaha can be more straightforward in the future. Here are some possible names for new Yamaha synths, that could relate to their true nature:

Mockery - Shows disdain for those who hoped for an even better Motif
Money - Acknowledges pricing of certain recent models
Monotony - Has same old presets and not enough user memory
Moody - Sounds randomly change/drift, without player’s control
Morbidity - Makes “sick” noises, might quit in the middle of a gig
Moronic - Just another model that ignores what users actually want
Motionless - Similar to a Montage, but minus the Super Knob
Motley - Has numerous LEDs of many garish colors, all lit at once
Mourner - Cries over what’s happening to Yamaha synths

Mooning - Caught with their pants down, as a reference to the survey maybe.

Mozilla-X - Similarities between the old Mozilla browser (Netscape - Firefox )and Mo ...(you name it)!
Same thing in a different package!
Sometimes it reminds me of the evergreen Gozilla ;-)

Maybe the bit about helping with product development was not deception but rather an unfortunate indication that the marketing department has more power over the product development process than one might hope.

🎹Lex - 16 November 2017 07:46 PM

Maybe the bit about helping with product development was not deception but rather an unfortunate indication that the marketing department has more power over the product development process than one might hope.

The marketing department might indeed have excessive control, but in my opinion the person who posted the description of the survey’s purpose was disingenuous.

The survey is multiple choice, starts with demographic questions such as age group and gender, and goes on to ask about things such as where one gets their information about synths, etc. I can’t see responses to such questions influencing much other than where ad dollars should be spent, and the like.

I entered a plug for Motifator in one case where a fill-in box allowed it.  :-)

why thank you!

MrMotif - 17 November 2017 05:31 PM

why thank you!

No problem, any time!

Another ROMpler bites the dust. NONE of the features I wanted were implemented in the Montage. Bob Moog didn’t take surveys before releasing the Mini. Everybody wanted a poly, so he stepped aside and let the company produce a piece of garbage called the Polymoog.

Bad Mister told me straight up at NAMM, “We took a survey and none of the features you’re asking about were popular.”

Good. It means I’m on the right track.

All Yamaha surveys are garbage and more pure garbage.

Yamaha makes what they want, when they want, but they’ll indicate they need to take a survey to help design their latest product.

Take for example the new Montage.

Yamaha claimed they did a survey asking what features do people want in their next synthesizer product? Supposedly all the people whoever that was, somehow stated that they didn’t want half of the feature set like a sequencer or sampler in Yamaha’s next workstation?

That was the biggest lying crock of sh*t anybody was ever told.

So here is Yamaha creating the biggest selling keyboard Workstation ever in the Motif XF, and all of a sudden, Yamaha feel they had to do a survey to see what buyers are looking for?

Yeah right, according to Yamaha’s survey, folks with a finger up their ass, were looking for an expensive keyboard with half the feature set of it’s predecessor keyboard? Yamaha all along wanted to cut the Sampler and sequencer out for now because of the digital synth addition, but they used a shoddy lie to deceive folks waiting on the next synth workstation, instead of just saying they’re making a basic plain synthesizer, They lied to make you think that was the successor to the Motif line, when it wasn’t. Only a full featured sampling/sequencing workstation can be the successor to the Motif and not a half featured synthesizer only.

Then Yamaha tried to lie to consumers to get them to buy into the Montage synthesizer believing you have the power of a true sampling, sequencing workstation.

Yamaha will come back with a new sampling sequencing workstation someday. But probably in a few years after all synth sales have died out in due time.

If Yamaha wanted to come out with a synthesizer, they didn’t have to lie about it, they could’ve said this is our new synthesizer instead of lying to people claiming they did a fake shoddy survey and they heard the couple of people who spoke as some kind smoke screen.