DCP Productions Motif XS, Owner'S Manual

Page 1: ...DCP PRODUCTIONS OWNER S MANUAL ...

Page 2: ...e key off triggering etc result in what is the most comprehensive and authentic collection of vintage keyboard and synth sounds ever created for any Yamaha workstation The library is divided into two groups of 64 voices each The first group A1 to D16 consists of electric pianos clavinets and other keyboard sounds The second group E1 to H16 consists of classic synthesizer sounds By vintage we refer...

Page 3: ...THE VOICES FROM THE DOWNLOADED ZIP FILE TO USB DEVICE JUMP DRIVE or FLASH DRIVE CAUTION Before you load Vintage Keys into your Motif XS MAKE SURE you have backed up any data you want to save onto a USB storage medium and your computer Loading Vintage Keys will overwrite the data that exists in the Voice and Performance banks 1 Insert your USB device into your computer s available USB slot It s ico...

Page 4: ...AUTION Before you load Vintage Keys into your Motif XS MAKE SURE you have backed up any data you want to save onto a USB storage medium and your computer Loading B s Knees will overwrite the data that exists in the Voice and Performance banks 1 Connect a USB CD ROM drive to your Motif XS To Device slot located on the rear panel of the Motif XS Power up the drive You will see a message in the XS di...

Page 5: ... features an expanded set of controlling knobs 8 altogether with assignable Knobs 1 and 2 at the far right of the row Additionally there are two assignable switches labeled Assignable Function immediately to the left of the eight sliders on the XS The assignable knobs 1 and 2 and the assignable switches 1 and 2 almost always control some aspect of the voice sound Turn the knobs or press the switch...

Page 6: ...s first Rhodes piano was the 32 note PianoBass used by notables such as Ray Manzarek of the Doors for his bass sounds In 1965 the design for the PianoBass was modified and enlarged to create an 88 key piano complete with amplification and speaker enclosure Thus began a line of Rhodes electric pianos manufactured until 1984 Harold Rhodes with his first design for the therapeutic piano to be distrib...

Page 7: ...it consisted of two suitcases a piano section with a detachable lid and a curved black plastic top and an amplified speaker section same length and depth as the piano section which fitted on top of the speaker cabinet A metal rod connected the keyboard to the sustain pedal which was housed in the speaker cabinet At this time the tremolo circuit for the amp speaker was mono not stereo and felt hamm...

Page 8: ...so moved closer to the hammers and all this resulted in a crystalline metallic chorused tonal quality Mark I Stage 73 Probably the most popular model of Rhodes piano The Stage series were identical to the Suitcase models except they didn t come with a speaker cabinet Instead the piano rested on four tubular metal legs which screwed into the bottom of the piano This is a model of a Stage 73 with th...

Page 9: ...also be right I actually had a Rhodes Stage 73 that sounded just like this there was something rather strange going on with the pre amp which caused the piano to sound distorted and brash no matter what the loudness was It was bitchin cool in its own metallic weird way as well depending on how you looked at the situation A7 Transistor 2 Variation on the same theme a Stage 73 with pre amp distortio...

Page 10: ...tcase 73 with felt hammers and very soft bell like tone A11 Neoprene Hammers Modeled after a 1976 Suitcase piano with Neoprene hard rubber hammers A12 Sunshine The famous Rhodes sound from Stevie Wonder s You re the Sunshine Of My Life hit song Warmer darker Suitcase piano sound with stereo tremolo engaged A13 Mutron Classic sound of a Rhodes through a Mutron Bi Phase pedal The Mu Tron BiPhase fea...

Page 11: ...Bass This was Harold Rhodes first successful commercial creation the 32 note PianoBass Used by keyboardists for playing what else left hand bass lines Since it only had 32 notes this voice is zoned so the main 32 notes fall in the correct range E1 to E4 Additional bass sounds are on either side of that range ...

Page 12: ...yride Modeled after the sound of Chick Corea s Rhodes on the song Dayride from return to Forever s album No Mystery Highly compressed bright thin and metallic B2 Distorted 1 Rhodes through a distortion pedal a la Corea s sound on some of the cuts like Captain Senor Mouse and The Game Maker from Return to Forever s Hymn To The Seventh Galaxy B3 Distorted 2 Variation on Voice B2 B4 Distorted 3 Anoth...

Page 13: ... Amp Noise Stage 73 Rhodes fed through a noisy small combo amp Perfect for rap and hip hop B8 Filtered Rhodes through an external envelope filter giving it that nasal quality for funkin B9 Bad Ground Okay this one is like a blind date gone wrong Rhodes with a noisy amp speaker and a bad electrical ground to boot which sometimes happened As said before not all Rhodes pianos were pretty B10 Led Song...

Page 14: ...t than the Mark 1 It looked different the top of the piano was redesigned to be flat so you could put another keyboard or two on top of it That and Rhodes changed the piano s control panel to include sliders for the EQ The classic combo was a Rhodes and a Minimoog synth or a Rhodes with a Clavinet on top of it and the minimoog on top of the clav Mark II stage piano same as the suitcase Mark II but...

Page 15: ...as electronic it could still produce a little bit of sound even when the power went out or someone accidentally tripped over the piano amplifier s AC cord To hear the sound of the Rhodes unplugged in all its glory you had to go one step further and pull the lid off revealing the harp assembly One also did this if the Rhodes needed tuning which you did by physically repositioning the individual tin...

Page 16: ...y Kravitz and Jellyfish also employed the retro sound of the Wurlitzer Though not as popular and certainly not as well built as the Rhodes pianos Wurlitzers maintained a special charm and possessed a unique clarinet like tone and a wobbly tremolo controlled by a push pull switch which you turned to increase or decrease the tremolo speed They were quite a bit lighter and easier to move than the Rho...

Page 17: ...ly producer Roy Thomas Baker split the piano sound so that the lowest notes the song is in the key of C are panned hard left and the body of the piano sound is panned slightly off to the right As the Wurlitzer wasn t a stereo instrument one can only conclude that Baker tracked the left and right hand parts separately C4 Faces Wurly Modeled after the heavily overdriven Wurly sound from the Rod Stew...

Page 18: ...Wurlitzer Model 129 C6 Paisely Wurli Psychedelic Wurlitzer sound And you d have to be trippin indeed to have heard this from an original Wurly s mono audio output ...

Page 19: ...Blonde Wurlitzer 200 trip out on this C7 Wurly Phazor Another Wurlitzer with a bit of studio trickery involving stereo phasing Hohner keyboards C8 thru C16 ...

Page 20: ...instrument that s how prevalent the sound is on everything from megabuck synth workstations to home digital pianos C8 Pianet What better way to start off a collection of Hohner sounds than with the sound of something other than the clavinet like the pianet Sounding like a cross between an anemic Wurlitzer and a ukulele the Pianet nevertheless found its way onto recordings by superstar acts like Fl...

Page 21: ... speaking of the clavinet sound The D6 was wooden more or less rectangular and boxy and despite its seemingly smaller size it weighed what felt like a ton When a key on a clavinet is depressed a plunger underneath touches what is essentially a guitar string and presses it onto an anvil Depending on velocity the string changes tone and dynamics When the key is released contact between the plunger a...

Page 22: ...jockeys end up playing parts that don t bother with the damper mechanism To make a long story short try NOT using the sustain pedal for your authentic clavinet ness Hohner Clavinet D6 C10 Wonderclav Yes it s the clavinet sound from Stevie Wonder s Superstition probably the song that defined the use of the clav in pop music C11 Stickyclav Clavinet with a different tonality and a little more of that...

Page 23: ...laim to have products in development for a significant time before they come to market but in Yamaha s case development was and continues to be years ahead of a product s actual release Sometimes as many as ten years A very astute young Yamaha engineer by the name of Mr Ichimura was dispatched to Stanford University in 1971 to observe a form of synthesis invented by electronic music teacher John C...

Page 24: ... heard it everyone s heard it so why not hear it again here This sound found its way onto about a bazillion records in the 80 s and continues to be heard today although people try disguising it a bit with software plug ins and other types of sonic mangling The classic DX7 D2 DX7 Electric Piano 2 Another DX electric piano type sound Similar to the timbre heard on the Motels 80 s hit Only The Lonely...

Page 25: ...nd I was in had a month long stint at the nearby bar I knew where I was going to be spending my free afternoons I probably wrote twenty songs on both of those keyboards and it was a sad day when we had to head back to L A D5 DX 1 It was actually the first commercially available DX synthesizer It was big It had a weighted keyboard and a beautiful wooden case It was the equivalent of two DX7 s and y...

Page 26: ...3 two Minimoogs an Elka string machine and a Baldwin Electropiano in tow I thought I had my ticket as a top session player all written out Then I went to the Starwood club one night and saw the keyboard player from John Q Public that was the band s name hammering away at a Yamaha CP80 with a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 synth on top of it That was the L A keyboard rig at the time I sold everythin...

Page 27: ...r The CP80 was cool It also went out of tune though not as often as a real piano did and it wasn t the lightest thing to move But if you owned one in L A in the early 80 s you were the business and that was that Since the Motif XS has samples of a Yamaha CP70 that s what this voice refers to But sound wise there is no difference between the CP70 and the CP80 just a difference in the number of keys...

Page 28: ... plated one D10 CP70 Phazer CP70 with phaser effect D11 CP70 Chorus CP70 with chorus effect Various classic keyboards D12 thru D16 D12 RMI You might not know what it was but chances are you ve heard an RMI more than a few times Rick Wakeman used an RMI extensively especially on Yes hits like Long Distance Runaround and on his ...

Page 29: ...nt Instruments not Rocky Mountain Instruments as some people think It was covered in blue tolex vinyl it stood on four spindly chrome legs It had rocker switches which controlled various voice settings but overall it always sounded about the same like a raspy harpsichord Farfisa organ but with slightly more bottom end RMI electric piano appropriately beat up D13 Vox Continental The organ sound tha...

Page 30: ... piece of 60 s kitsch cool you ever saw And wicked sounding in a brash cutting way Nothing like its chief rival the weighty massive Hammond B3 That was for soul men prog rockers and church types Not for skinny stovepipe pant wearing paisley shirted mods I ve included all seven drawbars for this Vox Continental voice so you can move the sliders and adjust the sound Instant Austin Powers vibe Yeah b...

Page 31: ...l the combo organ heard most on records was the Farfisa Compact Elton John used it on Crocodile Rock one of the more familiar Farfisa hit songs Screechy buzzy transistorized and loud just the ticket to complement jangly overdriven guitars Farfisa Compact D15 Electric Harpsicord Roger Manning of the Moog Cookbook and formerly the brilliance behind the 90 s band Jellyfish is one of the few people wh...

Page 32: ... sadly long gone and very hard to find Baldwin Electric Harpsichord D16 Toy Piano You could call the Schoenhut Toy Grand Piano which is what this sound is modeled after the ultimate vintage keyboard In a depressing twist of fate where technology has made things worse the wonderful sounding mechanical toy pianos of old have been replaced by electronic ones all of which sport dozens of bells and whi...

Page 33: ... 500 although I ve seen some collector s items that were fetching as much as 2500 Schoenhut toy piano the exact model I own ...

Page 34: ... t have an arpeggiator then no arpeggios are assigned to that voice This doesn t mean of course that you can t assign some on your own from the XS vast collection of arpeggios Similarly the ribbon controller is assigned to one voice G 11 U K CS80 Aftertouch to pitch modulation is also assigned to this voice That s because the real Yamaha CS80 had a ribbon controller and aftertouch control Moog Min...

Page 35: ...ter section and an amplifier section and knobs and switches to control it all The bulk of the knobs and switches were on a hinged panel which could be propped up at an angle above the keyboard the whole thing was self contained you could fold the panel back down and put the Minimoog in a small suitcase Directly to the left were two modulation wheels an innovation at the time which later became sta...

Page 36: ...Sadly Bob Moog passed away in 2006 But his company Moog Music lives on and thrives as does the Minimoog now reincarnated as the Minimoog Voyager OH YEAH I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THIS VOICE This sound is the classic Minimoog dual oscillator open filter sawtooth sound As with many of the Moog sounds in Vintage Keys Assignable Knob 1 controls portamento time and Assignable Knob 2 controls release imitat...

Page 37: ...The Minimoog Model D with clear acrylic wheels ...

Page 38: ...Minimoog Model D with white acrylic wheels and maple cabinet ...

Page 39: ...oscillators to unison with heavy detuning Assgn Switch 2 sets Oscillator 3 s pitch 3 octaves below that of Oscillator 1 E3 Mini 3 Osc 5th Triple oscillator 5th minimoog lead with less detuning between the two unison oscillators Assignable Function Switch 1 engages overdrive sound as outlined in voice E1 s description above E4 3 osc Octave Mini 3 oscillator octave Minimoog lead sound Assgn Switch 2...

Page 40: ...xes in white noise which tracks the keyboard Assgn Switch 1 lowers noise volume Assgn Switch 2 sets pitch of oscillator 3 to 32 steps below that of osc 1 2 Minimoog panel shot showing external input volume and noise amount controls The audio output of the Minimoog could be run first into a splitter then back into the external input to overdrive the oscillators the OVERLOAD lamp would light up Noti...

Page 41: ... caused oscillator 3 to be both a modulation source and audio source OSC 3 CONTROL switch determined oscillator 3 s keyboard tracking mode The MOD MIX knob determined the mix of Oscillator 3 s control audio signal and the level of noise with the 12 o clock position mixing equal amounts of both This is where all the wild and fun stuff happened and shows that the Minimoog despite its small size was ...

Page 42: ...ing intervals E11 E L P Lucky Man The thick detuned square wave lead sound used by Keith Emerson for the song Lucky Man on the first Emerson Lake and Palmer album The Minimoog hadn t arrived at the studio at the time the track was recorded so Keith used his huge Moog Modular for the lead sound Assign Function Switch 1 performs a very important function for this voice it changes the filter contour ...

Page 43: ...hesizer with sounds that were memorized absolutely stunning On the whole the Prophet s sound tends to be on the brassy side Even strings sound like they re half brassed pardon the pun It does have a feature called hard sync which made possible the signature sound used by the Cars Greg Hawkes on their hit Let s Go from Candy O More recently this sound has shown up on songs like No Doubt s Just A Gi...

Page 44: ... which added some lower octave support to the sound Additionally the SH 101 sported a simple arpeggiator thus this sound includes the arpeggiator as well Roland SH 101 E14 Chick s Odyssey Pity the poor ARP Odyssey It always ran a distant second to the Minimoog both in terms of looks and some would argue sound As Julian Colbeck states in his book Keyfax Omnibus Collection ARP always had to do thing...

Page 45: ...ds those were all ARP Odyssey In fact this voice refers to one of Chick s lead sounds from the Return to Forever album Where have I Known You Before ARP Odyssey Black and Gold version E15 ARP Highpass Lead The ARP Odyssey did have one thing the Minimoog didn t have a hi pass filter in addition to a low pass filter Years after the Odyssey was discontinued and ARP went out of business the Odyssey s ...

Page 46: ...d filter cutoff and resonance Korg dubbed this the Traveler section a slider controlling vibrato and a curious switch called brilliance which either added extra filter resonance or switched the filter to a steeper slope I m not sure which Price 1000 in 1973 which was still a lot of money for the time Korg Mini Korg SYNTH BASSES F2 thru F8 F2 Minimoog Bass Warm The classic Minimoog bass sound like ...

Page 47: ... F5 Mini Bass Filter Minimoog bass with bowng filter contour F6 Modular Rezo Bass Resonant bass produced by a modular Moog See description for Voice H5 Assignable Function Switch 1 calls up a super modular sound Assignable Function Switch 2 adds yet another oscillator and changes the filter contour Moog modular synth circa 1960 s Keyboard was separate from the main unit ...

Page 48: ...e The Roland TB303 Bassline is well known for its characteristic spiky or pointed tone Poor tone as measured against most other synths Actually it really wasn t playable in any sense of the word even though it had tiny little chicklet keys Difficult to use too one entered notes in a step fashion inserting rests and slurs usually by trial and error and the TB 303 supposedly replaced your bass playe...

Page 49: ...llator Mod 1 Type of sound achieved by modulating filter self oscillation with another source On the Minimoog ARP and later the Prophet and Oberheim synths the filter itself could be driven far enough into resonance that it whistled or self oscillated on its own One could then play discrete pitches on the keyboard using the filter alone although the pitches weren t exact incremental steps like a s...

Page 50: ...the sample and hold seemed destined to lead a charmed life appearing in modular synths disappearing with the portable lead synths like the Minimoog reappearing later as a waveform in modern sample playback workstations The sample and hold generator samples an oscillator frequency holds it for a brief period of time then releases it and takes a sample of another frequency holds that then releases i...

Page 51: ...passed away some time ago was probably the world s best Theremin player It was and is still a very difficult instrument to play not a keyboard but a sort of plate mechanism between two antennae Don t ask me exactly how it works I only know you wave your hands between the antennae and something resembling music is produced Quite lovely music at that if you re good enough at it although probably not...

Page 52: ...Moog Theremin ...

Page 53: ...Clara Rockmore the most accomplished Theremin artist who ever lived Photo is from the early twentieth century ...

Page 54: ...can still be custom ordered and handbuilt as of this writing May 2007 Looking like something from a 60 s gadget lab and not capable of staying in tune or even producing much in the way of musical notes the Synthi was nevertheless prized for the astounding amount of sci fi blips whooshes metallic creepy crawls and other worldly tones it could produce Used extensively for 60 s and 70 s BBC televisio...

Page 55: ...les and modified them using a joystick controller Created is a generous use of the term because the results were almost always unpredictable sometimes poor as in no sound at all but most of the time amazingly cool Although my old college bandmate somehow knew how to get a few sounds consistently The AKS Synthi A and its wooden cabinet cousin the VCS3 Putney did not have keyboards attached to them ...

Page 56: ...Pro One The Sequential Circuits Pro One was a monophonic synth based on the same circuitry as the Prophet 5 In fact it really was a monophonic Prophet 5 Plus it had a very cool arpeggiator The spirit of the Pro One carries on today in the form of the Dave Smith ...

Page 57: ...Instruments Evolver Designed by Dave Smith the same guy who created the Sequential Prophet 5 Sequential Pro One CLASSIC POLYPHONIC SYNTHS AND KEYBOARDS G1 thru G16 ...

Page 58: ...s that successor By the time the T8 appeared in 1983 the Yamaha DX7 had taken over and the Korg M1 was on its way Too expensive for most consumers and short on ooh aah features like reverb and delay not to mention sample playback the T8 was doomed from the get go It did sound awesome however essentially two Prophet 5 s packed into a single box with all the Prophet features a small memory sequencer...

Page 59: ... be a polyphonic Minimoog But it was obviously unstable judging from the fact that when you hit the keys the display would exhibit bad jitter or sometimes shut off completely And worst of all it had no MIDI and came out right on the eve of MIDI s introduction The keyboard didn t respond to velocity either Nevertheless it was a beautiful instrument to look at had a wicked cool arpeggiator and hard ...

Page 60: ... like boxes that you connected up to make a bigger synth very flexible but rather tedious and demanding on the setup and teardown end of things The Oberheim OBX was the first of their all in one Polyphonic synths later followed by the OBX A and then the OB8 The OB8 and OBX A look very similar and have the same basic and very cool Oberheim sound which is often described as more of a pure sound not ...

Page 61: ... 8 G4 OB X Strings The OBX preceded the OB 8 It was the first commercially available Oberheim product that featured a built in keyboard And the string sounds it produced still find favor in modern music production ...

Page 62: ... knows what all that made it seem tall and orchestral G7 Jupiter 8 Split Tuned to a fifth polyphonic synth sound typical of the Roland Jupiter 8 synth with a bass voice below the split point at E2 Used by groups like Duran Duran it was quite the space age thingie all silver metallic with brightly colored graphics The Jupiter 8 didn t have quite the razor edge of the Prophet or the purer tone of th...

Page 63: ...polyphonic synth The Juno 60 featured one oscillator plus a sub oscillator which could be switched on to fatten up things And it included Roland s famous bend lever which could be assigned not only to pitch but also to filter cutoff An analog chorus added thickness and detuning to the analog sound of the Juno 60 and an arpeggiator rounded out the menu The Juno 60 excelled at two things bass sounds...

Page 64: ... sounds that didn t need the chorus or phaser effects and that really cut through the mix If that wasn t enough the Polysix also sported a chord memory Hold mode you hit the Hold button then played a chord of up to 6 notes and the Polysix memorized your chord Anytime you subsequently engaged the Hold button the Polysix would re trigger that chord with just one finger on the keyboard On this voice ...

Page 65: ...ewhat cheezy string sounds which really didn t sound too much like strings But it was polyphonic cheaper than a Mellotron and weighed a lot less as well It s shining moment was probably when it was used with phaser effect on the soundtrack for the old Charlie s Angels TV show back in the 70 s ARP Solina with ARP Explorer synth on top ...

Page 66: ...ng you lifted up a lid to reveal a compartment containing a mini panel where you set sliders to store the sound and a neat ribbon controller One basically hoped that you had a house gig for two months or more so you wouldn t have to move it much The famous THX sound logo was inspired by the CS80 s polyphonic sweep created using a very long portamento time you can easily reproduce the effect by tur...

Page 67: ... on tour It foreshadowed both the Korg MI and Wavestation and its inventor Wolfgang Palm went on to design synthesizers for Waldorf Today we take the PPG s features for granted on sample playback workstations such as the Motif XS But in 1984 the PPG was groundbreaking and entirely unique sounding if not entirely user friendly The PPG sound tended to be on the edgy metallic side of things similar t...

Page 68: ...play successive new notes just as previous notes were nearing the end of their 8 second run That behavior is imitated here as well hold down a chord after 8 seconds or so it will cut out Recording playback was a generous 2 bits not 16 or 24 bits and generally the Mellotron sounds pretty bad but in a hip way Distorted grainy low fidelity screeching whining gear grinding yes I ll take some of that f...

Page 69: ...said before probably the best known hard rock synth sound of all time Originally done on an Oberheim OBX A Eddie Van Halen at the controls H3 Baba O Riley From the Who song Baba O Riley on their Who s Next album Most people think the song is called Teenage Wasteland At any rate the song is in the key of F To play the sound properly arpeggiate F1 C2 and F2 in the left hand in time to the LFO rhythm...

Page 70: ...r s Karn Evil 9 First Impression Part 2 on their Brain Salad Surgery album Most people refer to this song as Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends This sound is a good example of sample and hold modulating the filter Yes the song is in A flat which of course required Keith to play all his amazing stuff on the BLACK keys an incredible feat The sound itself was created on a modular Moo...

Page 71: ...Moog modular with keyboard controller quite a job for the roadies to haul around H6 Journey SeparateWays Jonathan Cain s Jupiter 8 sound for Journey s hit song Separate Ways Key of E ...

Page 72: ... horn sound from the 80 s hit The Final Countdown by the band Europe I m not sure what synth was used for the original but I suspect it was a Minimoog or possibly a Prophet 5 H9 Frankenstein The ARP 2600 modulated filter sweep sound from the Edgar Winter Group hit Frankenstein As the filter closes down use the mod wheel to animate it opening and closing it again rhythmically to imitate what s goin...

Page 73: ... the Sequential Prophet 5 s poly mod section see next voice description H11 Prophet Poly mod I loved the Poly mod section on the Prophet 5 Because I love big noisy gloopy ring modulated metallic slabs of industrial audio Which was what the Poly mod feature delivered in spades You could also use it with more subtlety to add a brush of metallic edge or a furry dash of modulated bleepiness ...

Page 74: ...ds could be created and was one of the Prophet s most distinctive features the other being hard sync Shot of Prophet 5 panel showing Poly mod section H12 Ringmod Bell A Low pitched ring mod tones easily produced on the Minimoog Prophet 5 Oberheim OB 8 and Roland Jupiter 8 Good for sci fi ambient and soundscapes The type of sound heard on the soundtrack for the film Blade Runner H13 Ringmod Bell B ...

Page 75: ... eerie Moog modular sound from Wendy Carlos soundtrack for the early 70 s cult movie hit A Clockwork Orange which starred a much younger Malcolm McDowell Carlos created the entire soundtrack and orchestral score for the movie on her Moog modular tracking individual monophonic parts one at a time to tape brilliant and almost unbelievable To get the right sound simultaneously play E1 in the left han...

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