Yamaha Montage 8 Review

We gave the Yamaha Montage 8 a 10/10. This pro synthesizer is made for performing artists It has fully weighted keys and aftertouch, which makes it stand out against its competitors. It has not one but two sound engines with almost 2,000 sounds, and live sets. The on-board speaker has a lot of tracks, and there are more effects and tweaks than you could ask for. We were really impressed with this one.

Overview

The Yamaha Montage range consists of the Montage 6 with 61 keys, the Montage 7 with 76 keys and the The Montage 8 with 88 keys. The Montage 8 is the only one with fully weighted hammer action and aftertouch. The smaller keyboards just have aftertouch.  

The Yamaha Montage 8 is a professional synthesizer designed for live performance and creative music making. This is a complex synthesizer rather than a “piano” keyboard which could be used as a piano.

It has an onboard 16-track sequencer for recording up to 64 muti-track songs. It’s main feature is the “Super Knob” which helps create multi-textured and multi-dimensional sounds. Colored lights pulse through the Super Knob in time to the music as you play. The keyboard uses “Motion Control Synthesis” to add depth and texture to your music. The Super Knob can also be assigned to a foot pedal, freeing you to play the keyboard full-on with two hands. 

The main piano sound has a very rich and contemporary feel – great for rock, pop and jazz in particular. Classical piano would sound good on it too, but it might not have enough depth or acoustic sound for classical pianists.  

One important thing to note is that this keyboard has no built-in speakers. This is because most professionals will want to feed their sounds through their computer, or at least into really high-end external speakers. This adds to the cost of your setup. 

Keyboard 

The Montage 8 is an 88 balanced hammer effect keyboard with initial touch and after touch. Most functions can be accessed by using the Super Knob. There are 8 other knobs that perform specific functions. 

The functions are shown on a color LCD screen in the middle of the panel. It’s fingertip touch operation makes it quick, easy and intuitive to use.   

Sound 

The overall sound from the Montage is incredibly high quality making it a great addition to any creative music-maker’s studio. As noted earlier, there are no built-in speakers so the sound you get depends hugely on the quality of external speakers or headphones you connect it to. 

The synthesizer itself runs off two powerful engines which can generate amazing sounds and textures. The AWM2 (Advanced Wave Memory) which has 5 GB of sounds, and the FM-X (Pure Frequency Modulation Synthesis) Tone Generator with a combination of FM sounds and New Generation FM sounds which you can combine. Each engine has 128 polyphony.

The main sounds on the Montage 8 are called “Parts” which can be layered to create “Performances”. There are approximately 1900 different sounds that can be layered and each one can be tweaked to sound entirely different.  

The Montage 8 comes with a variety of professional contemporary music effects, including Analog Delay, Vinyl Break, Bit Crusher and Beat Repeat. It also has a wide array of signal processing options, Reverb, Variation and an overall Master Effect and EQ feature.   

The Yamaha Montage 8 uses the name “Performance” to mean a set a four layered sounds, each called a “Part” which are all interchangeable. The AWM2 engine consists of familiar sounds such as pianos, guitars, drums, strings, etc., while the FM-X engine supplies synthesizer sounds. A “Single Part Performance” consists of one sound only while a “Multi-part Performance” is made up of up to four sounds. Within this, the keyboard can be split between two sounds with one sound covering the lower half of the keyboard and a different one covering the top half. 

Sounds are divided into categories and you can use the “Category Search” function on the LCD screen to locate the sound you want. 

Specifications

88 balanced hammer effect keys. Two engines: AWM2 and FM-X. (Note there are no built in speakers so you would need to purchase external speakers separately). 

Two sound engines produce around 1900 sounds which can be tweaked in dozens of different ways.  

Recording capacity features up to 16-track for up to 64 songs. 

12 types of reverb and 76 types of Variation, 15 types of Master Effect 

Connectivity: USB to device, USB to Host (to connect to computer), MIDI IN/OUT/THRU, Footswitch (assignable, or damper pedal), Footswitch 1 / 2 (assignable for instance to control pitch, volume or tone), OUTPUT jack (L/MONO, R), Headphone jack, AD INPUT (L/MONO, R) for connecting external audio devices such as a microphone, CD player or other synthesizer. You can also use the Vocoder feature by connecting a microphone and speaking or singing into it.  

Other specifications include: 

• Pitch-bend wheel
• Modulation wheel
• Ribbon controller
• Arpeggio function 
• Motion Sequencer function 

Knobs 1 – 8 adjust a variety of parameters for the selected Performance or Part, for instance effect depth, attack/release or timbre

Who Is It Suitable For?

Beginner 

This keyboard would likely be overwhelming especially for a child beginning to play the piano. For a creative adult, it might inspire music making. The main piano sound can serve for piano practice. There are other, simpler pianos on the market that would make better and less distracting starter pianos, such as the Yamaha P45.  

Experienced and serious pianists 

Concert pianists and classical music lovers probably wouldn’t love this keyboard as it’s very synthesizer and rhythm-based. However, any creative would probably get excited to explore the limitless possibilities with this keyboard. The option to use it with a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) via computer and combine Montage voices with other available software sounds would make it literally impossible to come to the end of what you could create with it. 

Pros and Cons

Pros 

• Very high-end synthesizer that professional players or composers would love. 
• Unlimited creativity
• Very current sound 

Cons 

• No built-in speakers 
• Not ideal for a beginner, especially a child, learning to play the piano for the first time 
• Extremely large and heavy 

Quick View 

Conclusion

The Yamaha Montage 8 is a contemporary music maker’s dream. A synthesizer with unlimited capability when used in conjunction with a DAW and software sounds with a capacity to mix and merge numerous combinations of sounds, effects and arpeggiators. 

For the beginner pianist this is far more than is needed. And, the high price might make it an unnecessarily big investment for beginner or early pianists. However, with that in mind, a beginner who is interested in getting into creating tracks with synthesizers would certainly have a great deal of fun with this instrument. 

In my experience, such a keyboard takes a lot of hours to explore, but by spending time on it you begin to get intuitive on it and learn everything it can do. Certainly, this keyboard is worth it if you have the money and time. 

10Expert Score

We gave the Yamaha Montage a 10/10. This pro synthesizer is made for performing artists It has fully weighted keys and aftertouch, which makes it stand out against its competitors. It has not one but two sound engines with almost 2,000 sounds, and live sets. The on-board speaker has a lot of tracks, and there are more effects and tweaks than you could ask for. We were really impressed with this one.

PROS

• Very high-end synthesizer that professional players or composers would love.
• Unlimited creativity
• Very current sound

CONS

• No built-in speakers
• Not ideal for a beginner, especially a child, learning to play the piano for the first time
• Extremely large and heavy