Motif Creator™

Motif Creator™ is a powerful Voice, Performance, Waveform, and Sample creator/editor for Yamaha Motif Classic, ES, XS, and XF files.

The Yamaha Motif™ is a new generation Workstation-style keyboard system that has excellent sounds and advanced functionality, for superior usage in the studio and playing live. The most immediate gratification of the Motif is playing it’s onboard sounds, which are top-shelf and professional standard. However, the Motif also allows for playback of user-defined multisampled keymaps (called “Waveforms” on the Motif) with the same possibilities as the onboard ROM waveforms. This functionality is entirely under the Integrated Sampling button on the Motif.

Although the Motif is a little less flexible then the older specialized hardware samplers (e.g. Akai S-5000/Z-Series, Emu Emulator 4, Ensoniq ASR-10, Roland S-7x and so on), and more less so then powerful software samplers such as Kontakt, it is still very powerful, and with the right software platform to assist in creating these sampled Waveforms and Voices, the Motif can go beyond it's stock sounds and fly high with your own custom Voices.

That is the goal and stated purpose of Motif Creator™.

Like most (if not all) hardware musical instruments, the onboard display and provided access do not give access to the Motif user-sampled area exceptionally well. Some Supermen have used it and worked with it, but among us Mere Mortals it's "in and out", since it is slow and difficult not only to view the total range of information, but also to apply new edits etc. Again, Motif Creator™ leverages the natural power of your computer to access, display, and arange information that it's a perfect and powerful bridge to create and edit Motif user-created content.

You will notice that a significant difference between Chicken System's Motif Creator™ and Yamaha's own provided Motif Editor is that the Motif Editor communicates via MIDI or USB to the Motif ITSELF, whereas Motif Creator™ simply works with Motif files themselves. This is because of lacking functionality in the Motif itself; it does not allow user wavedata to be transferred or detected through MIDI or USB. That is a significant ommission in the Motif Editor; although the immediate voice editing and librarian functions are wonderful, there is no access to the user Waveforms. In fact, on older Motif models the editor actually crashes when encountering a user Waveform.

Motif Creator™ takes advantage of only access to user Waveform data - via the files themselves. Motif Creator™ is practically a virtual Motif specialized for editing. You can make your own user Waveforms, edit and create your own Samples within those Waveforms, and much more. Motif Creator™ also allows innovate ways to listen and audition those sounds. Since it's not a Motif, it can't substitute for it, but with sampled sounds you can come awfully close. Most of the time, we foresee Motif users to operate Motif Creator™ to take care of the sampled side, since it more clear, powerful, and effecient then the Motif itself, but when it comes time to tweak the sounds and do the realtime parameter editing, we expect them to write the files and read them into Motif, edit away, then resave.

Motif Creator™ also includes management of ROM data. Renaming objects (Voices, Waveforms, etc.) is a breeze on Motif Creator™. You can manage your Categories (sometimes the center of most Motif user's experience!) in new powerful ways beyond what the Motif itself can do. You can even set up a library of Voices and create your own compilations to be written into a file for particular uses.

Motif Creator™, while powerful, is still a simple application. It was designed to give you easy and intuitive access to Motif data, with no funny business or confusing Corvette-looking widgetry.

Some notes regarding the documentation:

In this document, the term “right-click” also refers to “control-click” on a Mac. Only "right-click" will be used. Similarly, "Preferences" is term for different optional parameters that can be set in the program; on the Mac you will see the word “Preferences”, but on Windows you will see "Options". In this document, Preferences will be used. Graphics are all Mac, but look very similar to the Windows version.

Since the Motif regards the middle C key on a keyboard (MIDI note 60) as C3, by default Motif Creator™ shows the textual representation of MIDI note 60 as C3. This is the non-US representation. However, if you are more used to seeing C4 as middle C (like GigaStudio or other US models - or even some varied non-US samplers), you can change this in Preferences-General.

If you are a registered owner, you are qualified for free updates for the life of the program. You can download these from your program using the Check for Update feature, or from the Chicken Systems Update Area.

Motif Creator™ is consistently supported by Chicken Systems, with updates appearing frequently.