Motif for the Mind

Ok I want to talk about a keyboard which is one that I really had a good experience with, which is the Yamaha Motif. One of my top ten producers, Scott Storch uses this keyboard. This is a popular keyboard, I know several people who own one from a sixty one key, to an eighty eight. One feature I like about this workstation is the seven thousand arpeggios it comes with. This helps to really spark your creativity because many of the arpeggios have chordal intelligence capabilities of tweaking patterns in real time depending on the chords you play. The quality of sounds are outstanding with Yamaha’s expanded articulation technology, you get smooth horns and winds, guitar harmonics and key release sounds of pianos that add much realism.

Here are some of the key features:

- 88-key Balanced Hammer keyboard combines piano touch with synth flexibility
- 1,664 voices, including famous Yamaha pianos -- plus 97 drum kits
- 2 expansion slots accept up to 1GB of flash memory for all your sounds
- 128 MB built-in sample ROM -- start sampling right out of the box
- Stereo 1/4-inch A/D inputs accept a guitar, bass, or microphone source for sampling directly to your XF8 or streaming out via FireWire or USB
- 7000+ arpeggiator patterns -- many with chordal intelligence
- 16-track integrated audio and MIDI sequencing
- Time Slice function lines up digital audio with MIDI tempo
- Backlit 5.7-inch color LCD
- Built-in USB and Ethernet ports
- Add FireWire connectivity with an optional expansion board
- Included Steinberg Cubase AI software

Now this is by no means a vintage keyboard workstation but however it has earned its place in history. The Motif music workstation has grown over the years in polyphony and waveform memory. This is overall in my opinion a good choice if you are looking to purchase a new production keyboard or even if you need something to take out to your live shows.