The Yamaha Motif XS8 (Feature Fantastic)
Sep 21, 2011 Yamaha Motif XS8
When musicians think of the brand Yamaha, they think of reliability. Their reasoning for that thought is completely filled with validity. Yamaha continues to be the leading brand in a host of instruments, accessories, and musical gear. Simply put; YAMAHA ROCKS!!!!!!! Its always a plus for a company to have an upward mobility when it comes to their products and services. With that in mind, I would like to hone in on the Yamaha Motif XS8 today. First, I would like to take a very miniscule peek at its evolution. Yamaha first came out with the first Motif workstation in 2001. It quickly became the new standard with its super sonic capabilities, and its performance features in real-time. This quickly made it the preferred choice for professionals. Yamaha, knowing that they were on to something great, continued to enhance the Motif workstation. In 2003 Yamaha introduced the Motif ES (Extensive Sonic) to the music world. It had more polyphony and more waveforms than the original Motif. The next wave of evolution came with the Yamaha Motif XS8. It now has 355MB of waveforms, a huge color LCD screen, eight real-time knobs and sliders, and more than doubled the polyphony of the original Motif to 128 voices. This machine’s awesomeness is massive. I’d like to delve into some of the enhancements you can expect from this workstation.
The Sounds: If you know anything about Yamaha’s keyboard line, you would know that its full of great piano sounds. This 88 key-weighted series of the Motif is no different. Its default keyboard is the Full Concert Grand Piano, this sound is beautiful and authentic it will leave you wanting to hear it everyday. The pads and the organs are great for live performances if you don’t have a Hammond B3 handy. They also sound great in pro- tools. I’m in love with the string patches, particularly the Stryngs patch. Others patches, like the Solo Violin and the Solo Viola are great also. There are a host of FX sounds that spark my creativity when I hear them. This board is loaded with quality sounds that can be used in any musical situation.
The Control: With the Yamaha Motif XS8, you have more control than any of the previous workstations. There are 8 assignable knobs and sliders. That’s a 4-slider expansion from the ES model. The knobs give you the ability to tweak the attack, resonance, sustain, cut-off, decay and a host of EQ effects. There are two assignable function buttons with the connections also. Those connections are for two assignable foot-switches, as well as foot-controllers. The control that you have with this workstation is what any keyboard player would want.
User Friendly Platform: The Yamaha Motif XS8 would have been a very hard to master workstation had it not been for the simplicity put into the complexity of its platform. It is arranged into nine main modes: PERFORM, VOICE, SONG, PATTERN, MIXING, MASTER, UTILITY, SAMPLING and FILE. An example of how these modes simplify things for you would be: If you are in performance mode, it will allow you to layer up to four voices simultaneous voices. However, if you are in voice mode, you can only play one voice at a time. I’m impressed by the ease of use this complex machine has.
The Motif continues to reinvent itself over and over again. The Motif XS8 is a great improvement from the ES, and an even greater improvement from the Yamaha MO8. I would highly recommend this machine to anyone who is ready to play and control a professional but simple workstation. TWO THUMBS UP!!!!!!!!!!!!