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  • Set the tempo via midi on Yamaha Montage M keyboard

I recently started to use the stage traxx and it is a great app. I wonder is it possible to control the tempo of my Montage M. I want to be able to do next thing:
When I load the song in stage traxx, I want to send midi message to Montage M with the tempo information of that song. So, I don´t want to synchronize the tempo constantly (we don´t run the backing tracks), I just want to send the information: tempo in BPM. Montage would then receive the BPM and set this value for tempo in the keyboard. The click information I would then send from my montage to the rest of the band members. Is this scenario possible? Thanks in advance.

    ilijabozovic your tempo setting in ST3 is a general tempo setting of a song so if you have a varying tempo within a song your click track on your keyboard would not be in time with the backing track , so I would say your idea would not work on songs that haven’t got perfect tempo all the way from start to end.
    Why don’t you record a click in ST3 and use that?
    Mixing two devices to do a job is complicated unless both devices have same capability and are designed to work together seamlessly.

    Hello Damir, Thank you for the answer. I don't use backing tracks so I will not have a sync issue. I use ST3 for lyrics, chords and to change the sounds on the keyboard. I could record the click in ST3 but it seems to be time consuming. My montage already have click generator so I was thinking if there is a way to send midi message with the BPM information. This would be enough for me.

      ilijabozovic in that case I don’t see an issue you should be able to program a tempo midi command at every song start first line to update your keyboard as long as your keyboard can receive this and react to it .

      That´s a good news. I just don´t know the syntax to write the tempo midi command. Do you have a clue?

        ilijabozovic No , try contacting Yamaha support team they might be able to help or check your manual midi implementation chart
        Also midi users might be able to give you the basics , and Peter is very clued up in this area.

        I would be enabling MIDI clock in ST (https://stagetraxx.com/user-guide/midi/#midi-clock) and having the Montage sync to it.

        That said, if it were me, I wouldn't be 'double-handling' click by making a synth generate it and stay in sync to a master device via MIDI clock, I would simplify it and have ST actually be the tempo AND click source. A lot less to go wrong and I've always had mixed reliability (especially if there are many tempo changes mid-song) with MIDI clock.

        I'm going to guess you don't want to change because you've already got the Montage working as your click and tempo source and don't want the extra work or to 'break what has been working', but I think you'll find it (1) more reliable in the long run, and (2) easier to troubleshoot if anything goes wrong.

        ilijabozovic so as I understand, all you need is the lyrics/chords to be in sync with your keyboard that actually has you backing tracks playing and you then play along with the backing .
        This is very similar to what I was doing years ago with my Yamaha tyros2 which had capability to display synced lyrics and chords plus it gave me 4 audio segments to jump around , this worked perfectly as it also jumped to segments at the end of a bar not using time base like ST3.
        BUT! It was bloody hard to program everything to work how I wanted and it was all on my keyboard screen which was relatively small compared to an iPad or 85inch large screen , now I do everything on ST3 and use all my instruments separated from it like normal instruments without any technical issues or complicated programming yet the end result is I have 24 coloured audio segments , a large iPad lyrics screen with easy to program synced lyrics and chords plus, no complicated programming yet, life is much better now.

        Hello Damir, I was not really clear in my previous posts. I am not using a sync function for the lyrics and I don’t need it. I am also not using sync function for the chords. I literally just want to send information to keyboard: “this song is in tempo 150 BPM”. Even tempo don’t have to be synced constantly between keyboard and iPad. I just need initial information to set up the correct tempo on my keyboard and the click sound will come from the keyboard then.

          Well ST3 can currently only send midi clock during playback. But that would require you to start playback in ST3 to set the tempo on your device. As far as I know the MIDI standard has no other way to send tempo information to other devices.

          So add a song duration to your lyrics only songs and start playback to send the info to your keyboard. That's the only way to send the tempo.

          Or maybe the Montage has another way to receive tempo information over MIDI. If that is the case, you need to find out which midi commands need to be sent and then we can figure out if ST3 can send those.

          Hello Peter. I found the information in Montage MIDI data table. Seems there is a way, but I dont know how to transfer this data into a MIDI command. PLease check the screen shoot. The tempo command is at the bottom of the picture.

          How do you read this table? What does Address mean? Is this a sysex message?

          Sorry Peter but I am not able to answer this question. I am pretty new in MIDI world, and new with Yamaha keyboards 😀

          I think the above information is needed to interpret your table. So indeed this seems to be a sysex message. ST3 is not able to send sysex messages.

          ST4 will be able to send sysex messages but the creation of these messages will be rather ugly. You would need to manually convert a tempo into hexadecimal values and then construct this rather complex message. The full message would look like this: F0 43 10 7F 1C 02 06 00 02 1E 00 78 F7 for tempo 120 for example.

          The tempo value is transmitted in two bytes: the first byte is the number of times the tempo can be devided by 128. So for example tempo 144 can be devided 1 times by 128. The first byte is therefore 01. The second byte is the reminder of the devision (144 - 1 times 128 = 16) in hex notation. That would be the value 10. So your 2 data bytes in the above message are 01 10. The full message would be: F0 43 10 7F 1C 02 06 00 02 1E 01 10 F7

          I would rather go with the midi clock approach.

          ilijabozovic I am not using a sync function for the lyrics and I don’t need it. I am also not using sync function for the chords. I literally just want to send information to keyboard: “this song is in tempo 150 BPM”. Even tempo don’t have to be synced constantly between keyboard and iPad. I just need initial information to set up the correct tempo on my keyboard and the click sound will come from the keyboard then.

          So you are using ST3 for backing tracks ? , but you want to run a click track from your keyboard.
          Im sorry i don't understand the exact use of ST3 in combination with your keyboard , why do you want a tempo setting on your keyboard? Are you using its arranger function? If you only want the tempo data from ST3 to be remembered isn't it easier for your keyboard to remember this ?
          I am not getting a full picture of your operational needs to be able to possibly help, there are manny ways to do things and some ways may not be the best option.
          If you rely on ST3 for anything on stage, its a lot simpler to use it for click as well and not involve an external device, i am sure some songs slow down at the end or even vary in the middle a click from the keyboard will not follow , a recorded click in sync with your backing will, thats assuming you are using backing tracks as ST3 was designed for.

          I play with the band and we use ST3 first as a playlist so we know which song is next. Second, singer read lyrics and I read the chords. We don’t use option to highlight the lyrics and chords in real time. We don’t use backing tracks. We simply read from the screen, this is enough for us. Option which Peter suggested is the easiest. Simply create lyrics only song, define tempo and duration of the song and press play. It is working but I see slight tempo variation on my keyboard. I cannot really detect variation by ear but looking at the keyboard screen I see it is not constant. Is this normal? Once again, thank you very much for your effort 😀

            ilijabozovic I see now what you are doing and it shows how many different good ways ST3 can be used for, if I was in your situation then I still would not use the keyboard for click because you are running live you will have consistent tempo variation especially in songs with drastic changes in tempo , ST3 runs using time instead of a midi controlled sync like your keyboard , so if you program a set time for a song like in lyrics only your lyrics will smoothly move through that time and you can adjust that as well to compensate for solos etc.
            But you don’t get click out of ST3 using Lyrics Only.
            By using a normal stereo track in ST3 you get a lot more benefit out of it.
            What I would do is to record 10 minute 3 audio click tracks and use the artist column and call them CLICK SLOW, set at 60 beats per minute, CLICK MEDIUM, set at 120bpm, CLICK FAST, set at 160bpm, distinguish it from all other audio in ST3 , you only need to do this once, you load your text and chords, you use the END TRIM to set the length of your song , you use the SPEED to set your tempo for this song .
            Now you have everything from one device to, easy song selection to warn others of next song , when you hit play you get your click as well your lyrics will scroll to the set length of the song , the reason for 3 different audio click tracks is to get you in the ballpark of tempo needed because speed setting has limited speed change capability .
            There are other advantages of this system as you can then audio segment this audio so you could jump back to another part of a song with ease and get your lyrics/chords you are not fixed to a single run through a song and rehearsal time is more efficient , you just hit the section of a song you need to rehearse instead of having to scroll through a song every time.
            I would not be using Lyrics Only for a number of reasons as it has limitations while normal stereo tracks give you everything lyrics only plus more.
            Good luck with it , you definitely are using the best software to do what you need.

            ilijabozovic It is working but I see slight tempo variation on my keyboard. I cannot really detect variation by ear but looking at the keyboard screen I see it is not constant. Is this normal?

            Unfortunately this is normal. The midi engine in ST3 uses timers to send events and these timers don't fire as accurately as would be needed. iOS (and also macOS) unfortunately is not a realtime operating system. So ST4 will try to improve the accuracy by prescheduling midi events a bit into the future. For now you will have to live with a bit timing variations.

            Or you set ST3 to stay on the current song when playback ends and set the length to just a couple of seconds. So you press play and after a couple of seconds the song stops and the time will no longer vary.