Wow! I'd have to give up fishing and my wife and family to become well versed in all the ins and outs of an instrument like that. What say you, Donny, my friend? Think something like this has application for those of us who sing? I can see using it in studio but have a hard time seeing myself playing several sets of songs with an instrument like THE MONTAGE.

God Bless,
Don

I have no interest in the Montage..... An Arranger kb is all I need...

Don,..... I have used a few workstation synths and they are awesome fro music creation but the time it takes to multitrack songs and do all your homework for stage although the final result is awesome the time needed to perfect the songs is not something I have right now. The arranger kb lets me instantly perform songs and make it sound pretty good for my needs. The Montage is VERY Deep and I hope Yamaha developes some very in depth Instructional DVD videos, seminars, etc,.. for their users so they can understand and use montage to its fullest potential..

I think the learning curve is not a hard as you may think it is designed to be very user friendly it looks like it might be hard but if you watch some of the vid out there not too tuff at all

out arranger keyboards are just as deep

I personally think this will be a great addition to my rig

not always will i take it along but the times i do i will have the best of both worlds at my finger tips.

The Montage is just focused on totally different demands than an arranger, and I don't think it is the best choice for a typical arranger player.

With my MoXF I have spent hours at night to edit the best strings ensemble - combining up to eight different waveforms, using filters etc. - I just don't think the typical arranger player wants to do these things in a time-consuming way.
And the Montage is even much more extreme in this respect: especially the FM engine requires much more of programming and knowledge about that type of sound generation compared to a sample-based engine (AWM2).

Of course, you can just use all the presets instead of editing yourself - but then a large part of the Montage's capabilities are wasted. And furthermore, even if many acoustic sounds in the demos are impressive, I think the typical arranger player would quickly miss some typical acoustic sounds - how about Mariachi trumpets, Hackbrett, 30 types of Accordeons etc., the Montage range of sounds has a different focus.

I agree that the typical plug and play guy does not want to invest time i get it , i myself are looking to use fir production and live play as well

core sounds are great on T5 but i need a better piano and I was considering a digi piano but for a little more i can have the best of both worlds and great DAW PIPELINE as well

so all things considered I think a combo of T 5 and montage would be very nice for bigger gigs and Studio and band gigs montage would be great

my choice was going to be a CP4 or kurz Forte ect but montage 7 at 37 lbs and all that sound seems to be the better choice.

I just love toying with sounds for Hours... But only if it comes on top of the sit and player comfort the typicall arrnager should be first...

Same goes for piano, i love playing piano, and excersise between 30 and 60 minutes a day playing typicall piano etudes and other excersises...

But in the end nothing beats playing an arranger... Thats why i added a Kronos to my arranger and not an arranger to my Kronos...


So back to the Montage, what do i think the Montage can add to my set-up? Not much... Yet tough, i can imagine the Montage be the centrall part of a VST based system, with Varranger, live and Karma running on a high end tablet... Because the integration of the parts and ease of opperation to become creative seems to be a very unique experience..

I think the montage combined with a high end arranger module will sattisfy most arranger players, because there are so many build in soundpatches... I disagree somewhat with your statement that the montage will only work for people that like to create their own sounds, because On Yamahasynth.com BadMister stated that the majorrity of the Motif XF players mostly uses the build in sounds and performance... Which highly influenced the design of the Montage, thats why for example there is onl 256 memmory spots for user arps.. And its not possible to create your own arps... Same for sampling, you can no longer make your own samples nor edit them on the Montage...

I agree, at least for me, nothing, absolutely nothing, beats playing an arranger. I've played guitars, harmonicas, even tried to play a fiddle and 5 sting banjo, neither of which I felt comfortable with, but when I sit down at the arranger keyboard, I feel as if I'm in my element, and for me, it's hard to play without singing as well.

All the best,

Gary