Yamaha MO8 Tips?

[CMRVA]

Sorry for the vague and ambiguous post, our church has a Yamaha Motif (M08?) that about 4 of us play on, and sadly, we only have been able to scratch the surface of getting great sounds (I think we have 8 saved! ) and I know this keyboard could do a lot more. Any quick tips for saving sounds to a bank? Right now we have a step by step cheat sheet even to just turn the thing on and get the one bank of saved sounds (A couple of pianos, electric piano with phase, two organs and two strings, one synth, etc. ) we play contemporary Christian music and I could certainly use some arpeggiation at times, or a saved arpeggio, other synths, etc.
Just want to see if there are some basic rules out there we can use to experiment with and be able to save those sounds for quick recall. Thanks for anything you've got. Old 80's keyboardist here, back then I would have carried 4-5 boards to make these sounds!

 

[SeaGtGruff]

Welcome to the forums, CMRVA!

While I have no experience with the MO6 or MO8 myself, I do have a PDF copy of the manual. Whether you've already got a printed copy of the manual or not, I recommend downloading a PDF copy from Yamaha's web site, as it's much easier to find the information you're looking for if you can search for a specific word or phrase.

By the way, a cheat sheet sounds like a great idea! You could even have your notes printed up as a set of laminated index cards or something like that-- keeping backup copies of the original notes, of course, so you can have more cards or sheets printed should any get misplaced.

Do I understand correctly that you're looking for tips about saving and recalling user voices or performance setups, rather than tips about creating or editing sounds?

 

[CMRVA]

Welcome to the forums, CMRVA!

While I have no experience with the MO6 or MO8 myself, I do have a PDF copy of the manual. Whether you've already got a printed copy of the manual or not, I recommend downloading a PDF copy from Yamaha's web site, as it's much easier to find the information you're looking for if you can search for a specific word or phrase.

By the way, a cheat sheet sounds like a great idea! You could even have your notes printed up as a set of laminated index cards or something like that-- keeping backup copies of the original notes, of course, so you can have more cards or sheets printed should any get misplaced.

Do I understand correctly that you're looking for tips about saving and recalling user voices or performance setups, rather than tips about creating or editing sounds?

 

[CMRVA]

Yep, you understand completely! We all play sporadically just when needed, so I just want to be able to store "my sounds" for instance, on one bank so when I get the call to play, I can just go to that set of presets. Same for others. I also run sound on some weeks each month and usually have to help the players set up the keyboard. Especially since we want some of the teenage band folks to play, turning the reins over to the youth in the church. They don't seem to have any interest in actually learning what this board is capable of, they just want to show up and play. Thanks, I do have the manual, just have not gone through and read much (It's pretty lengthy).

 

[SeaGtGruff]

I'll take a look at the manual to see if I can think of anything helpful. But from having looked at user reviews for the MO8 at some of the online stores, I'm under the impression that the only way to save user setups is to save them on a USB thumb drive-- at least, that what some of the end users said, although I haven't checked the manual yet to verify whether such is actually the case. If it is the case, then one obvious recommendation would be to have different USB thumb drives for each person who's going to be playing the MO8. But I'll see what the manual has to say and get back to you.

 

[CMRVA]

Thanks, I just need to play around with it, there appear to be about 5-8 banks of sounds, and they way the first guy set it up, we use bank E only, so I think there are internal ways to save sounds, just don't know the process. I'll check too. Thanks, you are quite helpful!