Yamaha MODX review: Everything you need to know // full tutorial

hi this is mo DX by Yamaha it's the less expensive more portable version of their flagship montage since it has the same exact synth engine as its bigger brother but at a price range which makes it a very interesting player in today's synth market there's a lot going on and no DX in this video I'll look at the most important things you need to know to figure out if this seat is for you let's start by looking at some basic terms a performance consists of everything that you can do simultaneously with the mo DX the song I played in the intro to this video is all one performance all the sounds you can make at any given time simultaneously drums piano electric guitar and more keyboard splits and layers all the arpeggios or beats or sequences and automation or motion control for these sounds all the scenes which are different parameter states or stages of a song all the effects you can apply to these songs all that is contained in one performance and you can swap all those in and out as you please of course a performance can have up to 16 parts and each part can use either the FM or the sample engine now you can make great music on the mo DX without drilling down into the parts to see how the synth engine works but you'd be missing out on a lot so let's dive in and take a quick look at them and then zoom back out a sound starts on the mo DX from one of two core sound engines either the sample or a wm2 engine or the FMX Angele FM synthesis based engine you can also create presets where every key is a different drum or sample and the mo DX also supports general MIDI based presets but these two don't add a core sound type so with that said let's start by looking at the sample engine a sample based engine called a wm2 can play either one-shot samples or samples that have looping points that can go on for basically as long as you hold note [Music] built-in or cording x' of thousands of real-world instruments and sounds like pianos flutes drums and so on and you can also import your own samples from a USB Drive if you like there are no onboard tools that help you make looping samples like this one but there's a pretty good third-party tool that helps you set and fade looping points in your sample so let's dive in and take a look at what a sample part looks like I can dive in by hitting either edit here or edit here which brings you to this screen which has all the top-level menu items for samples as well as the sub tabs or sub pages for each of them each sample based part lets you load up to eight different elements eight different samples which can be completely different samples now each of these elements has its own independent control I can't go over everything obviously but I will look at some of the ones that I think are the most interesting for example on a per element basis you can choose what note range it will play at and what velocity range it will plant so if we look at all the elements clicking here you can see how they're split across the keyboard now this is a basic initial preset but if I go into a slightly more complex one I'd say this one and then dive in again to edit the part you can tell it this piano part activates different samples based on the velocity based on how hard you hit a note there are also certain samples that will only play at different note ranges now elements don't have to be just different versions of the same sample they can be completely different samples so for example if I load up the initial preset again this is a simple piano patch and again I go ahead and edit it I'll go into element two and then say load up a let's search for a cello here this one looks good and if I activate this element I now have a cello layered on my piano once I've got my samples in I can manipulate them in ways you'd expect to see in typical synths with filters lfos and envelopes for example if I wanted the cello to come in a little bit slower I would go into element twos amplitude envelope which is right here and then just increase the attack that way I can give the piano its space and then have the cello come in a little bit later now in case you're worried that this just plays samples and isn't a real synth with synth style waveforms I can always go in I'll just turn off these two elements and then bring in a new one again there's so many waveforms here you can easily search by category synth lead or just just choose let's say this one oh forgot to turn it on [Music] each part has a little bit of reverb send by default I can turn that off and just [Music] hear the sound raw other than the core oscillator and multistage amplitude envelope each sample engine element also contains and if I go back to the individual element contains a pitch envelope with plenty of configurable parameters including curve type if you're into that kind of thing you can actually get some pretty snappy envelopes out of this pitch envelope generator each element also comes with a dedicated multimode filter with numerous filter types including a few filters with an analogue style filter emulation which sounds quite nice with resonance of course as well [Music] each element also comes with a built in element LFO this element level LFO is pretty simple it has three shapes and is designed to let you quickly modulate pitch filter or amplitude parameters it also has nice delay and fade in parameters which lets you gradually bring it in to modulate whatever it is you're trying to change finally each element on the element level comes with its own EQ and you can choose either a 2 band or parametric EQ with relatively nice controls over frequency gain and a Q so everything I talked about up until now oscillator controls pitch envelope filter with dedicated envelope control amp envelope element LFO and element EQ all of those are on the element level and can be controlled individually for each of the 8 elements in a part 1 level above the part elements are the part common controls here too you have a few high level menu items and then a few tabs in each menu again there are a lot of parameters here I won't go through all of them we saw the reverb send and there's also a send to an additional master effect which applies to all the parts now while we're on the topic of effects aside from these two master effects send each part has its own two individual additional insert effects now the amount of effects on the mo DX is truly overwhelming I'll just go through these effects very briefly [Music] you can see that each effect has its own individual parameters this courses finders phasers let's go through [Music] distortions [Music] pressors Wow let's do again these are quite nice pitch change it also looks really nicely yeah so a lot a lot of effects that you can choose from the common part also lets you control the part arpeggio the motion sequencing with its four lanes and it has its own mod matrix including a part LFO which has many more options compared to the element LFO as well as actually editing your own LFO to customize it any way you like and it also gives you access to the parts control assigned tab which is where most of the mod matrix action happens now the effects arpeggios motion sequencers and mod control which I'll talk about all these later on all apply to the FM engine as well so let's take a look at that and then zoom out to these three [Music] so the FM engine called FMX is based on the capabilities of Yamahas classic dx7 synth but enhanced with more operators algorithms and oscillator shapes let's zoom in and take a look at that in a nutshell FM synthesis is kind of like the opposite of subtractive synthesis rather than starting with a harmonically rich waveform like a sawtooth or pulse or sample of a cello and filtering it you start out with a lonely single frequency sine wave which has no harmonics and add harmonics and complexity to it by rapidly modulating its frequency with another oscillator each FMX part can have up to 8 oscillators or operators as they're called in FM lingo and they can be connected to each other in different ways or different algorithms now don't let the word algorithm scare you off though it's just a fancy word for different ways of placing oscillators either in parallel or one before another the simplest algorithm is probably algorithm number one where each of the oscillators is simply routed out for you to hear there is a slight twist to it this still squiggle here which tells you that you can apply feedback to oscillator 1 to make it sound like this so in this algorithm if I wanted to bring in another oscillator or operator alongside this one I would just increase its level now we can't hear it because it's just playing it the same frequency but if I were to change its frequency [Music] all right two oscillators playing in parallel according to this algorithm now like I said we're from synthesis gets interesting is where you take one oscillator or operator and modulate another so if I choose another algorithm let's say algorithm number 6 just ignore everything going on from 3 4 and on to the right let's just focus on oscillator 1 changing the frequency of oscillator 2 I'll go back into oscillator 1 again I'm not calling them operators yet because haven't made them operate or do anything notice how operate a team doesn't sound quite normal in lower that's because oscillator one is affecting its frequency if I were to bring down the level of oscillator 1 then oscillator 2 or operator 2 is back to normal bring it back up you can see how the timbre of oscillator 2 changes now an oscillator becomes an operator when you attach an envelope to it which means you change how operator 1 effects operator 2 overtime with an envelope so if I increase the attack a bit we can make this change gradual which brings us to what I was saying before we can start out with a simple sine wave and then gradually add harmonics to it let me close it back down now in this algorithm operator 1 is modulating operator to operator 1 will be called the modulator operated to the carrier because we're not hearing operator 1 anymore we're only hearing what it does to operator 2 by the way check out what happens if we bring back the feedback to operator 1 this is how it sounds now let's take it to the mix quite different mo DX has another trick up its sleeve where it doesn't just rely on sine waves but rather you can choose a few different shapes for your operators for example one that has all the harmonics and to hear them we'll need to add some skirt to it or you can choose a shape that just has the odd harmonics sounds like it sort of like a square wave and then something with a little bit of resonance so those are FMX operator basics let's zoom out to the common level you've got overall part pitch control and you can also add same filters that we saw before as well as a filter envelope and same to insert effects per part and arpeggio motion sequencer and mod matrix including a complex LFO with a lot of options like we saw before and a simpler second LFO similar to the sample engines per element LFO okay so now that we have a basic understanding of the two different synth engines in the mo DX both the FM engine and the sample engine let's take a closer look at modulation many of the mo DX parameters like a filters cutoff the amount of distortion or a sounds pitch can all be changed over time or modulated in mo DX in three different ways manually via various physical controls like a sine knobs assigned buttons the super knob the mod wheel or external pedals then the second way is using predefined patterns using LFOs and envelopes like we saw before or the built-in motion sequencers which we'll talk about in a bit and then the third option is changing parameters dynamically using envelope followers or basically audio levels any modulation outside the core LFO and envelope controls happens on the part or the overall performances common screens and in particular on the control a sign tab which is this synth version of a mod matrix a quick way to assign a control to a parameter is using the control assign button so if I dig in for example to this part's pitch controls right let's say that I wanted to change this with this knob all I need to do is hit the control assign button then this screen turns up and turn this knob and from this point on [Music] this assignable knob controls my pitch now the way you know if you can apply modulation to a parameter is as you sort of touch these buttons you can tell that the controller sign button is on where you can assign a control to this parameter and it's off in cases that you can't now remember I said you can assign three sources two parameters physical controls motion sequence lanes and the envelope follower and as you may have noticed indeed when I hit the control assign button you can see that I can either turn a knob select one of the motion sequence or lanes or select one of the envelope followers or on these two in a bit let's go back to this knob and see what we can do in this mod Matrix so one of the first choices you may want to make is polarity as long as it's unipolar then changing this knob will only take the pitch in this case up from the core parameter but if I move it into the bipolar realm then I can go down for up now notice if I turn this knob counterclockwise it goes down if I turn it clockwise the pitch goes up I could invert this curve if I wanted and now it will work the other way around to turning it counterclockwise we'll increase the pitch turning a clockwise will reduce it remember the supply is not just a physical knobs but also to the motion sequencers and the end of the followers now you can choose whether the curve is linear or not but another really interesting feature here is that you can completely change the shape of a curve to quite a few crazy shapes I can sort of scroll for them here what this means is that as I turn the knob now the pitch value won't just go from the lowest to highest or vice versa but rather go through all these different phases [Music] and if you wanted you could also make your own curve types just hop into edit curve type and change this any way you wanted and as you do it will be reflected it's in the little screen here now once you're in the mod matrix or control assign screen you have access to all the other modulations in that particular part so I could add another one if I wanted choose any destination I wanted so plenty of insert effects parameters here part parameters and individual element parameters so let's say that I wanted to control let's say the elements pen and I wanted to control it with a sign you know let's do it with the mod wheel pretty straightforward don't forget to go bipolar which is appropriate for pending [Music] there's also a neat feature here if I click Auto select it will show me whatever a knob does just by turning it so this controls the pitch and if I touch the Mon wheel you can see it controls the element pan okay so we just assigned a few physical controls to any parameters we wanted let's take a look at the two other mods source types the envelope followers and motion sequencers so let's go back to the pitch parameter now remember I can control this with this knob but I want to assign another control to it which is the under loop follower now I can use any of the other parts but since I don't have anything in the other parts I will choose the ad input now I happen to have a microphone here if I turn on the input and then hit a note you can see that as I touched the microphone or perhaps even speak into the microphone as this picks up audio it impacts there were modulates the pitch parameter now this could be used for any number of interesting effects like for example connected to your drummer's kick drum and use it as sidechain or have the audio from any other part modulate any other parameter in very interesting ways that are rhythmically relevant so that's the envelope follower as a mod source the last mod source in the Moe DX is the motion sequencer each part can have four motion sequencing lanes I'll turn one on now this is basically like an advanced configurable LFO in order that we may hear its impact I'll go back into the mod matrix I'll add another modulation slot now the source for this lot is going to be let's look for it motion sequencer laying one and as a destination I'm going to pick the same coarse pitch parameter so now that we have this setup I'll go back into motion sequencer lane one and motion sequencing is something you need to turn on otherwise you won't hear it and now if I hit a key you can see this motion sequencer impacting the pitch you can sync the motion sequencer to your song and of course the power of motion sequencing that makes it more than an LFO is the fact that you can edit it on a granular level so I can change depth on a per step basis and you can also use these sliders to do it quickly and if I reduce the number of steps in the sequence it'll be quite obvious what's going on each of the steps can either be pulsed type-a or pulse type beat there are quite a variety of pulse types to choose from you can sort of see them here as I scroll through it [Music] it's [Music] you can create ratchets this way I can change part a as well again it's easier to see I just go through these so it's quite annoying with pitch but I think you get the idea again I'm using pitch just to make the changes really obvious but you can apply this to any effect you like filter cutoff of course any one of the hundreds of parameters on this synth and like I mentioned before motion sequencers have a global on/off button so if you want to stop the madness it's quite easy to do that okay so we covered the regular knobs what's the deal with the super knob well there are a few things that are special about it aside from the colorful blinking bottom part that glows to the beat of your song the first is that it can control not only multiple parameters directly but it can also control any one of the assignable knobs which in turn can control multiple parameters themselves another nice thing about it is that you can tell its position with the ring of LEDs around it's something that the assignable encoders have on the montage but don't on the mo DX so for example I've got this piano sound and I can gradually morph it to an electric piano sound and back and finally once you've set the super knob up to control any parameters you want you can actually automate the super knobs motion itself as a modulation destination you notice how in this preset it's literally moving the assigned knobs along with it this is also a nice preset that leverages a self moving [Music] Superman [Music] one of the things that struck me as odd as I opened the Modi X's manual was the claim that it had over 10,000 arpeggiators I mean up until that point I thought 10 or 20 was a lot but our page eaters in Modi X are quite unlike what you may be used to on other since so if I dive into this part and edit it hit the arpeggio tab I can go ahead and select any one of and there's a search for it because there are so many over 10,000 arpeggios the arpeggiator is also a global function you can turn on or off and once you turn it on this is quite unlike anything you may have heard [Music] pretty nice right and that's just one so you can either just scroll through the list and audition them one by one or you can search by main and subcategories now since there are so many of those you can obviously favorite any one of them and keep them around for easy and quick access like this one which is the basic standard what you would expect of an arpeggiator but you can start simple and quickly take off from there [Music] you may have noticed some of the arpeggiators are just one-shot sequences if they've gotten in here it means they can just do its own thing and don't bother it but you can't transpose it [Music] and you can actually create your own patterns and if you want to have the built-in engine intelligently adapt the patterns to the chords you play later so let's do this briefly there's a built-in feature for recording MIDI songs or audio files and you can also import your own MIDI patterns that you create with a DAW externally there's a USB drive in the back you plug it in and load up a song but more interestingly you can create your own patterns so let's say for example take that simple pattern which I can play back if I want but it's good enough I click here tap user ARP give it a name let's say demo now I can save this as one of three arpeggio types fixed we'll just play back the original pattern I played regardless of which key I hit original notes will play back the same notes that I played but transpose them based on the key that I hit and then normal is the least normal option which activates the Modi X is built-in chord our PGA Tour AI engine so let's do that and then store as user ARP so now if I go back to my part and edit it back into arpeggios and then click here and find my user cheesy demo turn on your page eater now check this out if I hit one note it just has one note to go on but if I start playing more notes and even more notes I start getting my original pattern but if I change the chord it changes along with it how crazy is that and of course you are welcome to create your own non cheesy patterns so you can treat this as a smarter page theater or as a sequencer on steroids I think this is one of the most interesting features of the mo DX and the montage of course and you can run up to eight of these simultaneously one per part now unfortunately there is no built-in step or piano roll style sequencer as of version 1.1 of the OS so you need to either import MIDI files created in a DAW through the USB Drive or record your arpeggio live thankfully there's a quantization option to help with timing now there is a touchscreen here so hopefully at some point in the future we'll see a piano roll style sequencer but for now either record a pattern and convert it or load in a USB file one more important thing to mention about arpeggios they're not just note or chord sequences they can also be rhythm sequences which you can add to your performance by hitting the rhythm pattern button you choose a kit and then you're off to selecting the pattern you want you can audition them cycle through the patterns quite a lot of options there [Music] okay let's move on let's talk a bit about part controls once you've got all your parts in place you have a few facilities for mixing and layering parts you access the mixer from the main performance screen and it has a nice bird's-eye view of the effects sends EQ options mute and solo options and also panning and levels the main performance screen which is sort of like the main homepage for the mo DX also has a view which lets you see the various layers and splits and here on the part level just like on the element level you can split up the keyboard either by note or by velocity so I can choose whether a part plays or not based on the velocity with which I hit a key I think this layering capability based on split and level speaks volumes if you don't mind the button about how serious Yamaha are about enabling deep and complex sound scapes when I first heard that mo D X has 192 voice polyphony 128 sample voices and 64 FM voices I thought it was a bit over the top but it's multi part multi layer functions along with how easy it is to just keep adding various layers and sequences means that all those extra voices can actually come in quite handy [Music] with thousands of presets sample types arpeggiators and drum patterns it's crucial to be able to find what you're looking for quickly and luckily there are pretty good facilities for that as we saw before you can narrow your search by main category and subcategory Green presets by the way load up as one part and blue presets load up with multiple parts and you can quickly audition the presets using the audition button [Music] [Applause] okay okay don't play that well joking aside the audition can actually be quite useful way to get to know a preset and some of the audition options like this one are pretty neat in that they cycle through the various parts for example here we're auditioning different amps in this guitar preset if you find something you like you can stick with it the live set feature by the way lets you create pages of shortcuts to performances and you can arrange these any way you like and aside from the onboard presets Yamaha has opened up a community preset sharing site called sound mondo calm where you can search for inspiring presets or just find a preset for a song you want to play with your friends for example the obligatory jump from van Halen [Music] as your song starts to come together scenes are a great way to quickly change a lot of parameters quickly for example change or pgo types motion sequencer types mute or solo tracks and change many other parameters for example in the song I played in the beginning of this clip I had three scenes for each of the three parts of the song and different tracks were muted or not based on what I was playing and different levels and parameters changed as I switched scenes you've got eight scenes per performance and total and you can tell which scenes have content in them by the fact that they are dimly lit [Music] moving on Modi axe can also be used as an audio interface with 10 mono or 5 stereo channels out and for in you can determine on a per part basis which outputs it gets sent to so that you can record them separately into your DAW and then apply additional effects to them or rebalance your mix let's take a quick physical tour of Modi X the seven inch screen is nicely viewable from multiple angles as we saw before you can select parameters by either touching them or moving up and down with the arrow keys you've got quick shortcuts here to various screens access to live sets and storing performances as well as a shortcut to part mute and solo on the left you've got four assignable knobs which you can toggle with to control eight tracks or use to change various parameters like tone parameters or arpeggiator swing timing and motion sequencer options the faders that you control either part levels or element or operator levels and the performance has overall eight parts that you can control with a keyboard and then eight additional parts that you can either control with MIDI or sequence with our predators on the far left our controls for master volume and audio coming out of your computer if you use the mode II acts as an audio interface and then on/off and gain for the external ad inputs there are assigned buttons in addition to the assign knobs which you can use to change parameters in your parts on the back our midi in and out ports to foot switch and to expression pedal inputs stereo speaker and headphones out and two audio inputs which you can use to send audio to your computer apply any one of the effects to and use as a source for the envelope follower as I showed you before and also tempo sync and coolest of all if you have a microphone around as a vocoder [Music] okay let's summarize by looking at some pros and cons on the pros side Modi X is a great sounding highly versatile synth offered at a very competitive price the Ross sample and FM sound engines are fantastic and the amount and quality of the effects won't disappoint you the modulation options are a sound designers dream and the ability to play multiple sequences or arpeggios simultaneously means there are very few limits on what you can do on the cons aside Modi X is definitely not a knob for function synth there's quite a learning curve which is to be expected with such a complex synth and even if you know what you want to get to it's quite often a few clicks away that said with the amount of parameters here a knob or function approach just wouldn't be practical it's obvious that the amount of controls were reduced to help lower costs especially compared to the montage but where I think it's felt most is with the reduced amount of faders and assignable knobs for more of each would have been very helpful the touchscreen interface is very readable but sometimes gets a bit sluggish and is a bit of a downgrade if you compare it to today's tablet and cell phone touchscreens you do get used to it after a while but it's not as snappy and precise as cell phone screens and that said there are phones that cost more than Moe DX these days so I guess this is an acceptable compromise the keyboard is very good but it doesn't have aftertouch the mod matrix however does support after touch detection if you want to pair Moe DX with an external keyboard with after touch finally it would be really nice to either have a fast workflow to putting MIDI files on the mo DX or a piano roll style sequencer built in in summary Yamahas mo DX is a sonic sequencing and performance beast capable of creating pretty much any soundscape you can imagine whether playing with your hands or playing on its own or any combination of the two it's a strong entry into the sub $1500 synth marketplace well worth taking a look at if you have any questions please feel free to ask them below hit like if this video was useful and subscribe if you want to see more and check out my book of electronic music ideas tips and tricks available to people who support this on patreon thanks very much for watching [Music]

Channel: loopop

Views: 374,587

Keywords: yamaha, modx, yamaha modx, yamaha montage, montage

Id: sksFzgCG62Q

Length: 39min 28sec (2368 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

That touchscreen looks horribly laggy

[u/Otterfan]

Wait, we're supposed to say "Moe-DX"?

[u/DessertTheatre]

I'm just glad they kept the FM capabilities in.

[u/darwonka]

I owned this for about two weeks.

Felt there were too many bells and whistles jammed in here. My feeling is this: it's a great synth with a workstation jammed in there. Unfortunately the granular workstation things get in the way of the synth.

[u/Cay77]

I think the MODX is an awesome tool for gigging musicians/keys players with a hankering for sound design, rather than a sound design tool with some add on features for keys players. I’m tempted to save up for this since improving my keys skills is a priority for me, I love FM, and the sample demos online sound spectacular. Would love to make some Jordan Rudess-esque epic orchestral sounds or prog metal leads.

[u/flynn78]

Can anyone post a comparison between FA-06 and MODX?

I realize that there is no FM engine in the FA-06 but how about the remainder of the synth functionality? Are the PCM sounds in MODX as good as the supernatural sounds?

I guess one edge the FA has is that it has a visual sequencer and percussion.