If only keyboards were completely customizable!

[Lufade]

For quite some time now I've questioned my purchase of the Roland Fantom G8 about a year and a half ago. It is surely a great instrument, but I still have felt a pull towards others. I did not do as much research as I now realize I should have done before making the purchase. For some reason I do not now understand, at the time I thought the M3 was a joke, though I already owned and somewhat loved a Korg X50. And I've never seriously looked at Yamaha instruments. For a while now, every so often, when I get the urge, I'll look up videos, sound clips, and information on the top keyboards just to try to see which I feel would be best. A couple visits to my nearest Guitar Center allowed me to test some of the sounds, but of course didn't allow much time for deep exploration. After these trips and my other various research efforts, I had decided that I liked Korg sounds and capabilites over Roland, and that the Motif XS was almost useless. But recently I realized I never gave the Motif a good chance. So today, when I was able to visit a Sam Ash music store, I decided to go further with it. After that visit I decided that I actually like Motif sounds above all the others. Hence my dilemma! I love the Yamaha sounds. But I find the real-time effects manipulation available on the Korg M3 to be far superior. I just can't stand the idea of seperate wheels for pitch and modulation! A joystick style controller is so much more practical. If only I could breed them! Motif sounds with a Kaoss-like X-Y control mode and 360 degree joystick! Oh! And Roland's full color 10.25" screen!

 

[robthehoood]

well if i were you ide get the M3 and sample motif sounds! haha get a smart media and try to go to a guitar center and plug a motif into an m3 and sample sum sounds and then take it home on your media and have more fun! hahaha

 

[kanthos]

Or even get the M3-61 and a Motif XS module.

 

[robthehoood]

but that cost money!

 

[kanthos]

Duh.

It has some big advantages though.

1) No waiting for samples to load every time you turn on the M3.
2) Playing Motif sounds doesn't reduce the polyphony of the M3.
3) It's a lot less work.
4) You don't have to find someone who will loan you a Motif or hope that your local music store doesn't get pissed at you monopolizing two pieces of their gear for a long period of time (and that's assuming that the Motif and M3 are close enough in the store to run an audio cable between them - in my local store, the keyboards are grouped by manufacturer and I'd need a 30-ft cable to do that).

 

[Lufade]

I agree with Kanthos. Right now my ideal setup would be a Korg M3 73 with a MIDI cable running to a Motif XS Rack. Since the Motif Rack is obviously just a brain to be MIDI controlled, I would have the M3 16 layer combinations set up to combine Korg and Yamaha sounds, while using the expression controls of the M3 to control it all. I'm sure it's a setup I'd be quite happy with. But alas...the money will be hard to come by. If only it were easy to sell a big keyboard, I could sell my Fantom G8 and put that towards beginning that setup.

 

[robthehoood]

well dont think you cant sell your roland! plenty of people would buy it, just go to craigslist.com and sell the sucker and get a beautiful m3!