Motif XS7 review - Arps, Performances, Software
Author: Vedran Dakic
Date: 20 Jan 2007

Having four arpeggiators onboard is pretty cool. Now being very spoiled by Stephen Kay's KARMA technology in Korg synths, I must say that there's a lot room for improvement there for Yamaha. These four arp combinations are just nowhere near the richness and infinite amount of excellent things done by KARMA, although they sound MUCH better then on the previous Mo's. So, the same comment that you could apply on any other arpeggiator out there, you can apply here - it's just too robotic, too mechanic. That's why only the more "modernistic" performances actually sound good on XS's. If you want to have more pop/rock/jazzy-kind of performances, you have to go around the beats and you have to be able NOT to do things at specific time, but to dance around the beat a little bit. If I was to give an example from real life about this, I'd just go for a Dire Straits' most known and popular song, Sultans of Swing. I played that song in about ten different bands, and none of the drummers was ever able to play it the way Pick Withers played it - with ups and downs, both in tempo and articulation, velocity and complexity. You can just say it in one word - there's no "swing" in arpeggiators. And KARMA can swing, bigtime. The Motif XS just lacks overall character, which is something I've been saying about Mo's for a long time.

As far as the software integration is concerned, the XS goes another step forward in the right direction. After Yamaha acquired Steinberg, this was kind of expected, so, you can finally enjoy the results - the integration with Steinberg's Cubase seems flawless. If you don't have the money to buy the Cubase 4, XS comes with Cubase AI, that should be more then enough to get the job done. You also have something that's called Motif XS Editor, and you can use that for mixing setup, sound mixing etc. You can also use it as a Cubase plugin, which is excellent. If AI-version of Cubase isn't enough, you can always upgrade it to a full version of Cubase. I actually think that this is the reason Korg finally made some steps in that very same direction, especially looking at M3's studio integration. So, thumbs up to Yamaha for that.