Sounds interesting its kinda reminds me of KARMA used on some old Korg and some older Yamaha workstations. My question is are the sounds playing the actual MODX/MONTAGE sounds?

From the first post of this thread:

* It connects via USB to the synth and drives its sound engine via midi.
* 1800+ custom developed AWM2 and FMX sounds optimized for arranger use. Massive use of available DSPs.


To elaborate further, from our website:

THE BASELINE
We started from the factory sounds and quickly realized that they are not suitable for the purpose:

* Unequal volumes and character, no standard style of programming. They are a collection of sounds gathered together from different sources and legacy synths with no relation with each other.
* Wildly inconsistent response to controllers.
* Multi parts occupied (even when not necessary).
* Unpredictable use of DSPs.
* Lack of sounds/choices in many categories important for arranger use.
* Ridded with arpeggiated dance-style riffs which get in the way while live playing in most musical genres.
* Mostly inherited from 20+ years old synths, with sparse or no use of the newest and most exciting waveforms.

WHAT WE IMPLEMENTED
So we decided to reprogram the whole set from scratch in a consistent and predictable way:

* All the sounds have the same volume (you can swap them arbitrarily without the need for any volume correction in the mixer).
* All the sounds come with a variation built-in, thus instantly doubling your choices. The variation is sometimes bold, sometimes subtle, but always useful and appropriate for the sound at hand.
* All the sounds come with a main modulation (usually acting on many synth engine's parameters), tied to the mod wheel. You have one easily/naturally reachable and consistent point of modulation during your performance.
* All the sounds are editable with a handful selection of top level parameters, those that make more sense for an arranger player. You obtain the most impact with the least cognitive effort.
* All the sounds are single part (= 1 midi channel). You have 16 parts in the mixer, and you can use 16 independent sounds. Simple, effective and well tested paradigm; universally in use since the inception of midi music.
* All the sounds make consistent use of DSPs: by design they sound good even without them, but can optionally be enhanced/changed with them. The preprogrammed DSPs do NOT alter the overall volume of the sound (only the character), so you can switch them on/off seamlessly. Consistency and interchangeability are milestones of our philosophy.
* We added many patches, both AWM2 and FMX, filling the gaps and increasing the diversity of the available sound palette. We also programmed many "mega" voices, used by the arranger engine to increase the realism of acoustic sounds.

BENEFITS FOR THE PLAYER
The result of this monumental effort is a gigantic set of 1800+ high quality and fully consistent sounds (AWM2 and FMX). For the first time you can use native FM voices in an arranger.

Never such a comprehensive sound set, designed to play like a team in a predictable and consistent way, has been available in a sound module/synth.

All the sounds are thought to be played by hand and are useful in real live performances by real players (not a single sound makes use of arpeggiated stuff). You can creatively use Groovyband Live! even without touching the arranger engine: use it like a workstation/sound module with tons of quality sounds you can easily organize in split/layers and play from up to 3 keyboards. Everything from a clear, touch native, user interface which conforms to well tested industry standard paradigms everybody is used to.

To make things more exciting, you can use all these 1800+ sounds without committing a single memory location in your MODX/Montage: we program on the fly the performance buffer (a volatile memory location meant to hold the "currently playing" performance). Groovyband Live! thus acts in a fully transparent manner: it does not modify your synth in any why, and leaves it exactly as it was found!


If you check the website there are many more info and also the full user manual.

This video shows a performance using Groovyband Live! + MODX8.

The piece ("Odissea Veneziana") was very famous in Italy (and Europe) in the 80s. The band Rondò Veneziano (was actually a composer + various classical orchestra players) did a remake of Venetian baroque music of the XVIII century.

All their pieces are actually original and written nowadays, but in the baroque Venetian style (which was actually spread through all Europe and played at King's courts, such as Versailles in France).

The player in this video triggers fill-ins using the touch screen. He could have used as well the MODX physical buttons above his left hand (one of them is red lit), or any other midi physical controller USB connected to the tablet.


Check here a medley of some of Rondò Veneziano's hits.

IMHO, that’s a degree of precision and too far a distance from the keys to hit those little fill ‘buttons’ on the touchscreen. Perhaps you have time if there are few changes around the fill boundary, like this tune, but busier songs, I’m not sure I’d like the pressure live of finger tapping that one little area with a sea of other buttons around it…

And yes, although I know that buttons and controllers on the MODX could possibly be used, I don’t see enough of them for all the fill and variation selections one might need. Not to mention, compared to a dedicated arranger, they still are placed FAR further from the LH playing area than any real arranger. Usually, the fill and variation buttons are the absolute closest to the LH chording area to minimize the time away from the keyboard. Workstations aren’t arrangers!

Perhaps there’s a good case for a screen dedicated to JUST live playing control with the buttons for fills and variations, breaks and intro/outros MUCH bigger and laid out so they’re harder to miss?

That’s one of the beauties of touch screen operation, you can provide alternate layouts (maybe ‘simple’ and ‘full” e.g.) for specific tasks. Seems like, for actually LIVE playing, there’s a lot of unnecessary data being displayed, forcing important things into a more cramped space. And the other great thing about touch screen operation is that adding simpler screens isn’t a total rewrite of the code, just an alternative front end.

There are times when I want to see a whole bunch of data on a screen. But in the heat of performance is not one of them. Especially with my fat fingers! 😂

Good idea! We will definitely consider it in the next update. And yes, it is not a big effort to program.





In the video review posted earlier, a Korg NanoKontrol placed on top the MODX front panel was used to add more physical controls.
But yes, a long row of buttons just at the root of black/white keys is the optimal solution. ..... if you can live with a tiny and low quality screen (which hinders every action and is not easy on aging eyes) and a dated features set, and ... many others downsides (including the price and total inflexibility on keyboard action/quality/size and other controllers you might want to add to your setup).

Every product/solution has its pros and cons. As always in life, you have to balance your priorities.


P.S.: If you closely inspect the Odissea Veneziana performance video, you will notice that the performer has a Yamaha Genos above the MODX (he also used it in older videos on his YouTube channel). So he apparently was not fully satisfied even by the 4k€ Yamaha flagship arranger. Maybe he wanted to try something better .....

It’s mostly the raw sounds that drive my arranger choice decisions (or any keyboard, tbh). Sadly, while modern workstations have made great leaps forward in synth sound realism, they have tended to move further and further away from acoustic instrument emulation. In truth, most TOTL arrangers have better acoustic sounds like saxes, guitars, strings etc., especially articulated sounds.

This is to be expected, as workstations if designed with live use at all tend to be designed for group players, where killer guitars etc. aren’t needed because you have a real one (plus emulating acoustic instruments isn’t really a thing for most youngsters). All in all, for the older solo performer, the modern arranger is still probably the better choice, as IMHO you lose more going to something like a MODX than you gain. If you are doing ‘dated’ music, maybe the ‘dated’ keyboard is the better choice!

Displays are also not a priority for me live. To be quite frank, if you are spending much time live looking at a screen of any type, you aren’t looking at your audience, or your hands, or the girl at the bar! I try to set my keyboard up so I can perform the song without any looking at all… different Performances handle all the button pushing and screen squinting chores live..! Yes, it would be nice at home while preparing stuff, but that’s what my iPad apps are for if I want to give my aging eyes a rest!

Arrangers are pushing 40 years of refinement about layout. It’s a tough job to come up with a better scheme, most of the bad ones have been tried and failed!