Yamaha is no stranger to designing cutting-edge synths that end up becoming revered industry standards. From the DX7 to the MONTAGE, they’ve earned a reputation for setting the standard for decades.
When the original MODX lineup was released, it was meant to be a more affordable, scaled-down alternative to their flagship MONTAGE. It was followed up by the MODX+ series, which was a revved-up rendition of its predecessor. The MODX M series, which includes the MODX M6, MODX M7 and MODX M8, seeks to incorporate even more of that MONTAGE magic into its chassis, while giving musicians a more intuitive interface to work with.
Less menu diving, more creating.
We got to chat with Blake Angelos, senior product development specialist at Yamaha, for an exclusive, in-depth conversation about the MODX M series’ development and what it brings to studio and stage.
What can you tell us about the new features—like Performance controls—on the MODX M?
You have the new eight fader design with four knobs and Performance controls, like Keyboard Hold and Portamento. When you hit Keyboard Hold, it holds a chord that you play, and then when you play the next chord, it plays the next chord and shuts off the first chord. So, if you have a series of pads that you need to play on a tune, and you don't want to have the sustain pedal going, you could hit Keyboard Hold and precisely play the chords.
It makes it super easy if you're doing a multi-keyboard setup, or if you want to hold a sound and edit the filter. It’s something that’s great for playing solos.
We also added Portamento with a dedicated button and time knob. Another thing are these display knobs, located under the display. We added those in MONTAGE M, and I was really happy to see that it appeared on the MODX M. They make it a lot easier to navigate. We also separated Scenes and Part Select into their own controls for better interaction with a MODX M Performance.
Now, when you hold the shift button, anything that's in red can be selected. There are a number of features accessible with the Shift button. For example, this is how I select all the Parts of a Performance. Buttons one through eight select the first eight Parts. Press Shift and you can access Parts nine through 16. Speaking of the faders, you can control Digital In, USB Main and any incoming A/D Input from an external source, such as a vocal mic or electric guitar, with the button below the Part select buttons. These are all UI changes inspired by the flagship MONTAGE M.
There are also more things to select in the four-knob Quick Edit section. When you press a button to select one of the six rows—like the one for the Cutoff, Resonance, Reverb and Variation—and those parameters pop up on the screen.
Another thing inspired by the MONTAGE M is the Navigation button. That is the bomb. As soon as you hit Navigation, it brings up an overview of the entire Performance. You can see things like filter, amplitude—everything that shows signal flow. It makes it much easier to get around on the instrument. If you want to edit the filter and don’t know how to do it, hit Navigation, then you can just select it right in the touchscreen, and you’ll go right to the filter settings.
All of this has been really well thought out, and it just makes the whole experience much easier. It’s a pretty complex instrument, but we’ve done our best to widen the user interface as opposed to deepen it.
Pictured: Yamaha MODX M8 Synthesizer Control Panel
I’m curious about the AN-X engine. There are 12 voices of it. Can you tell us about that?
It’s a nice three-oscillator, analog-modeling engine with a noise generator. It also has 10 fully resonant filter types, with two filters available simultaneously. So, you can have a high-pass filter on there and a low-pass filter on a single sound, if that’s what you want.
As for oscillator types, AN-X features five waveform types: Saw 1, Saw 2, Square, Triangle and Sine. Saw 2 has a gentler slope and a thicker sound, Square generates the classic odd harmonic sound, Triangle give a brighter Square sound and Sine is the pure fundamental sound with no upper harmonics.
What’s cool about AN-X to me is that you can dial in voltage drift and aging. Aging basically takes it from more modern analog sort of vibe, like a Dave Smith Instruments kind of thing to a more “vintage” sound. It changes from a brighter to a darker sound. It's really subtle and then voltage drift simulates that weirdness.
And each oscillator has its own sync. It also has a wave folder as an effect, but it's also built into the AN-X engine. So, the bottom line on this AN-X engine to me, is that it can certainly do the traditional analog sounds, but it also has a lot of capabilities to do a bit more stuff you wouldn't expect. Some of the options almost sound like they’re FM—which is really interesting.
Lastly, it also has the Smart Morph component, which uses a machine learning process to take up to eight different sounds and put them onto a grid. And then you can morph between the different sounds. So, it's a way to create sounds without really having to know “how to do it.”
Let’s say I wanted a mallet kind of a sound, but also pad and hard sync oscillator sounds. It will do this process. And as you move through the grid, when you find one that's a nice combination of them, when you hit save, it saves that offset. So, that’s just AN-X, but there’s also FM-X, where Smart Morph showed up first. This also has that eight-operator FM, 88-algorithm FM engine.
There’s also a resonant filter you can assign to an FM sound, which you didn’t have in traditional FM. At least 12 of the parts have their own dial-insertion effect. And there’s tons of effects in there that you can choose to add to the FM-X as well.
Pictured: Yamaha MODX M8 Rear Panel Logo
What does Performance Mode entail on the MODX M?
In a Performance, you can have up to eight different parts, which are full-on voices, patches—whatever you want to use—which you can freely later or split into layers. You have keyboard control over those parts, but there are an additional nine to 16 parts that you can use for sequencing. They’re used for the Smart Morph.
The MODX M6 and the MODX M7 have an updated keyboard action. Can you tell us a bit about that and some other ways they differ from the M8?
They’re using what's called FSB. It’s what we have on our midrange arrangers and on the CK61. It just feels better. The action just is more responsive. The M8 has our graded hammer action. It’s the same one we have on P-125, and it feels great.
The other thing is that the design of the M6 and the M7 is way more compact and streamlined. When you play it, the entire instrument just feels more solid. And some of it is that the action has been changed, and some of it's because it feels more substantial under your fingers.
Pictured: Yamaha MODX M8 Synthesizer Keybed
One of the things that’s always been interesting to me is that the pared-down version usually comes two or three years after the flagship. And in some ways, while it’s spec’d out a little less, it’s benefitted from the learnings in that period. Is there anything here that really jumps out to you as exciting developments for this series?
If anybody already has a MONTAGE M, especially something like an M8X that weighs 62 pounds, you can get a 29-pound, 15-ounce weighted-action instrument that can load all your MONTAGE M sounds for gigs. That’s really the main thing—having that MONTAGE DNA. While the processor on the MONTAGE M is capable of handling more, has more polyphony, more direct control, a second LCD display for Quick Editing, etc., the engines are nearly identical. And MODX M will load MONTAGE M backup files, user files—they share the same file format.
A game changer for musicians is E.S.P. (Expanded Softsynth Plugin). We released MONTAGE M first, then introduced E.S.P. Now it is available in AU and VST3 formats. MODX M will follow a similar update trajectory. Expect to see feature updates in early 2026. E.S.P. allows you to have your MODX M sounds, synth engine—everything—in your favorite DAW, just like MONTAGE M.
If I want to send the sound that I'm working on my MODX M hardware, I just put it into the E.S.P. There are tons of these cool cinematic sounds—that you'll only really find in a DAW or some other package—they built into this that are pretty impressive. You have a full sim of the instrument and its parameters, along with full integration between the hardware and the software.
Within E.S.P., you can access your sounds and libraries, and filter by sound engine if you’d like. It loads all MONTAGE and MOTIF XF files as well. You have sine wave, all harmonics, odd harmonics or resonant harmonics. So you can do a lot more with the FM technology in this, which is very cool.
It’s an AAX plug-in that runs VST3 plug-ins. So, if somebody is a Pro Tools user, they have something like Bluecap software that hosts a VST3 or audio unit in their environment, because they use AAX.
I am in a band that plays “Superstition.” I play the YC88 in that band and, while it has great clav sounds, sometimes I like to use E.S.P. because there is a MONTAGE M clav sound I really like. What's great is can connect the YC88 via its built in USB-to-host MIDI and audio connection, launch Cubase and assign E.S.P. to a virtual instrument track on my laptop. I can play that sound live with very low latency. It just works!
Another thing about MODX M is MIDI 2.0 compatibility. So, you’ll be able to control elements like pitch bend, modulation, volume and velocity. As MIDI 2.0 evolves in the computer OS environment, expect deeper integration between devices to significantly improve.