Chicken Systems Motif Creator User Manual
Motif Creator™
Version 1.2, Build 1
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Motif Creator™ Table Of Contents
Motif Creator™
Table Of Contents
Introduction..................................................
Basic Concepts..............................................
The Motif Document
Main Screen...................................................
Motif Object Views..........................................
Keyboard Optional Display...............................
Wave Optional Display ....................................
Working with Objects
Adding Objects...............................................
Deleting Objects.............................................
Editing Objects...............................................
Renaming Objects...........................................
The Motif Player.............................................
Preparing and Re-importing..............................
Editing Single Samples Externally.........................
Exchanging Objects..........................................
Auditioning Samples and Waveforms.................
Importing External Instruments........................
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Editors.........................................................
The Voice Editor..............................................
The Element Editor.........................................
The Waveform Editor.......................................
The Sample Editor...........................................
The Performance Editor....................................
The Part Editor................................................
Menus
File...............................................................
Voice/ Performance.........................................
Element/Part..................................................
Waveform.....................................................
Sample.........................................................
View.............................................................
Help..............................................................
Gear Menus - Voice/Performance.......................
Gear Menus - Waveform..................................
Gear Menus - Sample......................................
Preferences
Preferences...................................................
Support
Troubleshooting..............................................
FAQ.............................................................
Bug Reports..................................................
Contacting Technical Support.............................
Updating......................................................
Contact Us.....................................................
Credits..........................................................
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Motif Creator™ Introduction
Motif Creator™
Introduction
Motif Creator™ is a powerful Voice, Performance, Waveform, and Sample creator/editor for
Yamaha Motif Classic, ES, XS, XF les.
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
gratication of the Motif is playing
it’s onboard sounds, which are topshelf and professional standard.
However, the Motif also allows
for playback of user-dened
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 exible 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 y 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 difcult 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 signicant 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 les 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 signicant 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 les
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
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Introduction Motif Creator™
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 les 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 le 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:
This document is synced to the Motif Creator™ version denoted on the cover of this document.
It is a dynamic document and often is revised with every major, minor, or even build of Motif
Creator™.
In this document, the term “right-click” also refers to “control-click” on a Mac. Only “rightclick” 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 PreferencesGeneral.
If you are a registered owner, you are qualied 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.
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Motif Creator™ Basic Concepts
Basic Concepts
The Motif Creator™ Motif document represents a single Motif le. It can be one that is existing,
or a new one that hasn’t been saved to disk yet.
Your experience with Motif Creator™ revolves around creating a new (or opening an existing)
Motif le into a Motif document, editing the objects within that document, then saving the
document as a Motif Bank le. This
saves all objects, such as Voices and
Waveforms, into a single le set.
Motif Creator supports Motif All Files
(.w2a, .w7a, .x0a, .x3a) and All Voice
Files (.w2v, .w7v, .x0v, and .x3v).
Future versions will support All
Waveform Files (.w2w, .w7w, .x0w,
.x3w).
All Files contain Motif Performances,
Voices, Waveforms, Song, and System
information. All Voice Files only contain
Voices and Waveforms.
The Motif Document shows you the most important aspects of the Motif les: the Voices, the
Elements within each Voice, the Waveforms, and the Samples within a Waveform. These are
represented in four Lists; the Voices with the Elements, and the Waveforms with the Samples.
There is also a Performance List and a Part List, shown in the Performance View.
From there, you are free to add, delete, or edit any of the objects to your needs. For more
information on the Motif document, where you’ll do the majority of your work, see The Motif
Document elsewhere in this document.
Each object has an Editor. There is a Voice Editor, Element Editor, Waveform Editor, and Sample
Editor; and additionally, a Performance Editor and Part Editor. One editor can be open at a time,
and it edits the current selection in the list on the Motif document. For more information on
Editors, please see the Editors section elsewhere in this document.
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Motif Creator™The Motif Document
The Motif Document
The Motif Creator™ Motif document represents a single Motif le, 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 le, changing the
objects within using the Motif document,
then saving the document which saves
everything to the a new or existing Motif
le, for immediate use in your Motif.
Lists
The Lists on a normal 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 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 le.
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:
- Voice/Element/Waveform
- Waveform/Sample
- Performance/Part/Voice
- “Four Corners” (Voice & Element on top, Waveform & Sample on the bottom)
- Full View
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 this 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 viewing. 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. 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 smaller “window” into the Waveform (or Voice).
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Motif Creator™ The Motif Document
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 eld and popup menu above each list lter the lists contents. Typing into the text eld
lters the list based on what you typed; e.g. typing in “Trum” (without the quotes) in the text
eld 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
specic; 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 rst Element enabled, and is set to the rst 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 nonoverlapping samples within a MIDI Keyboard with variable Velocities. By selecting a Waveform
in the Waveform List, the associated Samples show 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 specic information will be given in other places in this document, so
we’ll cover them briey 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-ElementsWaveforms-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 les from outside Motif Creator and drop them
on the Sample List, it will automatically add those WAVE les 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.
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Motif Creator™The Motif Document
Two very powerful functions are included on the Main Screen; Importing and Preparing. These
are covered in depth in other areas of this document. Consider turning this viewer off in
Preferences.
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Motif Object ViewsMotif Creator™
Motif Object Views
The Motif Creator™ Motif Document has several views so you can work effeciently. Sometimes it
is important to get a birds eye look at your Motif le, and sometimes you need to only look at a
portion of the le.
Views can be access either by the Views top-level menu, or the Master Gear Menu on the upper
right of the document.
Motif les (or we call them Banks) have up to 6 components to them:
Voices
Elements
Waveforms
Samples
Performances (All Files only)
Parts (All Files only)
Generally the Voice is the Queen of the Bank, because so much centers on the Voice. Because
of this, most Views have at least something to do with the Voices.
There are 5 Views, separated into 3 Categories: General, Detailed, and Special.
There are two General Views:
Full View
This includes from right to left: Voice-Elements,
Waveform-Samples.
This is a good general view of the Bank. You can select
Voices and see the Elements that work within them.
You can view the Waveforms, and view the Samples
referenced by them. And you can assign Waveforms to
Elements very easily, since the lists are ght next to
each other.
Four Corners
This includes from right to left: Voice-Elements, the
below that left to right Waveform-Samples.
This performs the same purposes of Full View, except
that it values the details of each view (you can see
more of the columns) because of 2x2 alignment. Full
view is more valuable when you want to see more
entries of one list.
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There are two Detailed Views:
Voice-Element-Waveform View
This includes from right to left: Voice, Elements,
Waveforms.
This is when you are most concerned with assign
already-designed Waveforms to Elements. The Samples
list is omitted since you are already comfortable with
the contents of the Waveforms.
You have more horizontal information since there are
only 3 lists.
Waveform-Sample View
This includes from right to left: Elements and Samples
This is for hardcore Waveform designing, you can see
the minutiae of the Waveforms and of the Samples. You
are not concerned with Voices or anything other then the
Waveforms and Samples.
You have much more horizontal information since there
are only 2 lists.
Motif Creator™Motif Object Views - Voice-Element-Waveform
Finally, there is one Special View:
Performance View
This includes from right to left: Performances, Parts, and Voices.
This is the Performance Editor, where you can assign
Voices to Parts, and thus develop your own Performances
easily. Performances do not exist on any other list, since
Voices are more commonly used and Performances are
“far away” from Waveforms and their dealings.
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Keyboard Optional DisplayMotif Creator™
The Keyboard Optional Display
Since the Motif is basically a keyboard, and everything revolves around a keyboard, so it’s just
natural that we put a keyboard display on a Motif document. It shows you what the contents of
the current Waveform are, allows you to select a Sample within the Waveform, and also allows
dropping to import Samples into the currently selected Waveform and determine their Key
Ranges.
Sample View
The Keyboard display shows in alternating pink and green the Samples that are referenced in
the currently selected Waveform (on the Waveforms List). Velocities are also shown, in various
tints.
Sample Select
By clicking on the Keyboard display, this selects the Sample according to where you clicked.
This also pertains to Velocity -the higher up you click, the higher velocity gets selected.
Sample Import
By dragging and dropping external Samples (WAVE and AIFF) onto the Keyboard display, this
allows you to import Samples into the currently selected Waveform. If you drag more then one
Sample or a Folder, multiple overlays will appear as you drag onto top of the display, with a
maximum of an octave spread. Dragging higher on the Keyboard makes for wider spreads.
Dropping on the Keyboard display imports the Samples into the currently selected Waveform.
If there are overlapping Samples, they are deleted or cut-away - this is because Waveforms do
not allow overlapping.
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Motif Creator™Wave Optional Display
The Wave Optional Display
No editor would be complete without a Wave Display!
Although there is one in the proper place in the Sample Editor, you can display one on the main
screen by checking the Wave Display menu in the top-level View menu, or the master Gear
Menu.
This displays what you play in the Sample list. There are no transport controls; well, there
actually is - the single button on the Sample List performs this function.
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Motif Creator™ Adding Objects
Adding Objects
You add Voices, Waveforms, Samples, or Performances by dragging objects into the Lists,
by clicking the + button under the List, or pressing the Insert button (INS) on the computer
keyboard.
Voice List
Drop a Voice from another Motif document into this list, and it will add it to the Voice List. (We
should say it will replace the Voice selected.) Or drop an external le, like a Kontakt .nki, Apple
.exs, SoundFont, etc., or even one or more WAVE/AIFF les, on the Voice List and it will create
a Voice and make Waveforms that will hold the samples. Clicking the + button or pressing INS
will allow you to select one or more external Instruments to Import in (See Importing External
Instruments for more information.)
Waveform List
Drop a Waveform from another Motif document into this list, and it will add it. Or drop an
external le, like a Kontakt .nki, Apple .exs, SoundFont, etc., or even one or more WAVE/AIFF
les, on the Waveform List and it will create Waveforms that will hold the samples. (You then
have to assign the Waveforms to Elements within Voices, if you wish.) Clicking the + button or
pressing INS creates a blank Waveform, in which you can add Samples to.
Sample List
Drop a Sample from another Motif document into this list, and it will add it. Or drop a WAVE/
AIFF. When importing external samples, Motif Creator assigns the rst available key from the
left of the keyboard and gives it a one note range. You can edit the range afterwards. Clicking
the + button or pressing INS brings up a Open dialog where you can select WAVE/AIFF les to
import.
You can also add Samples by dropping them on the Keyboard Display at the bottom of a
Motif document. This provides an easy way to add a sample to a specic keyrange. For more
information, see the Keyboard Optional Display in this document.
Performance List
Drop a Performance from another Motif document into this list, and it will add it to the
Performance List. (We should say it will replace the Performance selected.) Note: you
cannot import external foreign formats into the Performances List yet, even if the format is a
Performance-type (like a Roland Performance). This will be incorporated in a future version.
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Deleting Objects Motif Creator™
Deleting Objects
You delete objects in a List by clicking the minus sign (-) button under the List, selecting the
“Delete” Gear, Ctl/Right-click Context, or top-level menu option, or by pressing the Delete
button (DEL) on the computer keyboard.
The popup menus under the lists determine if you are deleting all the objects or just the
selected ones.
Since it is impossible to delete a Voice or Performance, in this context it means Initializing the
Voice(s).
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Editing ObjectsMotif Creator™
Editing Objects
You edit an object by double-clicking the object in the list, or by selecting the Gear or top-level
menu “Edit...”. It is only possible to edit one object at a time, so if there are multiple objects
selected in a List, only the rst selection will be edited.
When you edit, the appropriate editor appears. For more information on Editors, see the Editors
section of this document.
For Samples, there is also an additiona; “Edit External...” menu option. This allows you to
edit the sample in an external editor that you specify in the Preferences dialog. For more
information, please see the Editing External Samples section in this document.
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