The Motif Document

The Motif Creator™ Motif Document represents a single Motif file, existing or a new one that hasn't been written yet. Your experience with Motif Creator relvolves around creating a new or opening an existing Motif file, changing the objects within using the Motif document, then saving the document which saves everything to the a new or existing Motif file, for immediate use in your Motif.

Lists
The Lists on a typcial Motif Document show the principal objects; the Voices (List 1) and the Waveforms (List 3). The Element List (List 2) shows the Elements contained in the currently selected Voice, and the Sample List (List 4) shows the Samples in the currently selected Waveform.

There are also two other Lists; the Performance List and the Part List. These appear when you are in the Performance View.

The purpose of the Listst is so you can view the contents of the File that is represented by the document and apply functions to change, edit, or build up the file.

Views
Speaking of Views, the Motif Document interface is highly customizable, so you can either have all the List on the document at one time (admittedly crowded), or you can see only what you want to see for handy editing. The Views are:

You can choose which view you'd like with the Gear menu on the upper right, or the top level Views menu. For more information of Views, see the Views section in the manual.

Range Maps
On top of the Element List and the Part List you can have Range Maps perched on top of them. This allows for graphical editing of the Ranges (Key and Velocity) of Each Element or Part. Key is selected by the top button to the left of the Range Maps, Velocity by the second button. A green color indicates which Range you are looking at. The third button (yellow) gives you a context menu byselecting it, giving you some auto-mapping options, plus some viewing options. If you have no immediate use for them, you can hide them using the context menu or the Views top-level menu.

Having the Range Maps mounted on top of each other makes it easy to see how Elements or Parts are arranged against each other. You can alter the range by simply grabbing and pulling each end with the mouse. Selecting the middle of the range allows you to slide it back and forth.

(Remember, these Ranges are actually "Limits"; that is, with an Element, you are restricting the key/velocity response. The Waveform the Element refers to may have information beyond the limits, you are simply creating a samller "windows" into the Waveform (or Voice, as with Voices) .)

Also remember that the Ranges do not appear on Drum Voices, since there are no Key/Vel Ranges to deal with, just the natural 1-Key limit of a Drum Element.

Optional Displays
There are two option items you can display on a Motif Document; the Keyboard Display and the Wave Display. The Keyboard Display shows the contents of the Waveform that is selected in the Waveform List, and also responds to dragging and dropping of external Samples into that Waveform. It makes mapping incoming samples a breeze. The Wave Display shows the waveform of the Sample selected in the Sample List, for easy recognition.

For more information on the Optional Displays, see either the Keyboard Display or the Wave Display areas of this document.

Filtering Lists
The text field and popup menu above each list filter the lists contents. Typing into the text field filters the list based on what you typed; e.g. typing in "Trum" (without the quotes) in the text field above the Voice List brings up Voices with the names "Trumpet Short", "TrumLngBrght", and "Guitar Strum". Multiple criteria can be inputted by seperating them with commas.

The popup menu varies with each List. but give you common ways of making each list more specific; e.g in the Sample List you can view just the external samples.

Performing Functions on List Objects
The whole purpose of Motif Creator™ is to add, edit, delete and change objects. Voices can't be deleted per se but they can be initialized. A "blank" Voice is one that starts with the letters "INIT" (case insensitive); initialized voices usually have no sampled waveforms referenced, just has the first Element enabled, and is set to the first Piano waveform.

Mostly what you'll edit in Voices is the contents of the Elements. Other then providing a set of real-time parameters, an Element's main purpose is to playback a Waveform, whether it is a ROM Waveform or sampled (RAM) Waveform.

RAM Waveforms are listed in the Waveforms List. A RAM Waveform is a collection of non-overlapping samples across a MIDI Keyboard and with variable Velocity ranges. By selecting a Waveform in the Waveform List, the associated Samples show up in the Samples List, with their properties.

There are many ways of adding, editing, and deleting objects. Most of these are standard computer methods. More specific information will be given in other places in this document, so we'll cover them briefly here.

You can use the Gear and Plus (+) and Minus (-) buttons below each list. Clicking the Gear button exposes a Menu that is very much like the top-level menus titled Voices-Elements-Waveforms-Samples. You can apply the function to selected objects in the list, or to all of them, by selecting the popup menu next to the buttons (Apply to All, Apply to Selected).

Ctl/Right-clicking on a list brings up a Context Menu which is usually identical to the Gear Menu for that list. It ALWAYS applies to the selected items in that list.

Dragging objects is a very powerful editing method. All drags and drops do what you would think they would do. If you drag a Wavefrom and drop it on an Element, it will set that Element to that Waveform. If you drag a couple of WAVE files from outside Motif Creator and drop them on the Sample List, it will automatically add those WAVE files to the Samples List. You can also drag Voices, Waveforms, or any object from one Motif document to another.

The INS and DEL buttons are active to make new Waveforms or Samples, and Backspace serves as another DEL button.

Lastly, two very powerful functions are included on the Main Screen; Importing and Preparing. These are covered in depth in other areas of this document.