Yamaha Montage arrives in South Africa

Yamaha Montage arrives in South Africa

The Yamaha Montage is now available at all Yamaha Music SA dealers in South Africa.

The Montage was unveiled at Namm2016 in January and represents a new era in synthesizer technology. It provides new and unique ways for keyboard players to create sounds, have more control over their sounds and interact more fluently.

Montage is the culmination of over forty years of synthesizer legacy and innovation.”

Yamaha Legacy

The Yamaha Montage follows on from a rich legacy of synthesizer development that harks back to the legendary DX7 in the 1980’s, a synth that still has an incredible influence on music today and, of course, the Motif series which is one of the bestselling synthesizer series of all time; we’ve seen them on stage at many big [and small] concerts.

The Montage is set to raise the bar once again and features the Motion Control Synthesizer Engine, a powerful and intuitive way to interact with and control sound.

There are 3 derivatives in the range; a 61-, 76- and 88-key version.

Motion Control Synthesizer Engine

The Motion Control Synthesizer Engine manages two sound engines; the FM-X and the Advanced Wave Memory 2 (AWM2).

The AWM2 engine has integrated flash, almost ten times more wave memory, double the effects, and twice the polyphony as the Motif FX, which is the flagship of the Motif series. Importantly all previous Motif libraries are compatible with the new engine.

The FM-X engine deliver pure Frequency Modulation (FM) synthesis which producers of EDM or Indie/Nu-Dance are going to love since it delivers those classic 80’s synthesis sounds.

The two engines can be zoned across the keyboard or layered across 8 parts for one single Montage performance.

The Montage Motion Control matrix gives you highly programmable control to create immensely textured sounds with incredible expressiveness. In essence you can create new sounds not possible on previous hardware synths.

Brand New Interface

Montage looks fresh and innovative in every sense. Features include a colour touch screen, endless rotary encoders and a Super Knob.

The Super Knob allows one to control multiple parameters at once via a macro that you’ve set up.

A sound is a sound

On the Montage one of the biggest overhauls  is that Yamaha have revamped their sound library in terms of how it is organized. Different patch categories have been completely done away with such as multi or comb for example opting instead for simply one mode; performance. In essence they are saying that a sound is a sound no matter how layered it is or isn’t. So if you’re looking for a sound there is but one place to find it. Furthermore they’ve done away with banks too.

Instead you simply search for a sound using text and for refining searches simply use metadata tags.

By simply calling sounds, ‘sounds’ and keeping them all in one place removes that age old gripe of menus and sub-menus and certainly brings the Montage closer to what programmers and players are used to with software synthesizers.

For more info on the Montage, or to find a dealer, hop on over to the Yamaha Music South Africa Facebook page or call them direct – 011 259 7700