Mainstage3 and Yamaha Motif ES

Is the Motif set to USB? Also, try using a powered USB hub. You could use a MIDI to USB cable, but change the setting below to MIDI.

Hi Chensa63,

I'm using Yamaha MX61 with Mainstage 3 and each time I connect the USB cable into macbook, Mainstage recognizes it. It's not supposed to Assign keyboard in Layout screen, I guess. Even when I pull out the USB cable, Mainstage popup complain that no MIDI device is connected, then soon after I put cable again and Mainstage recognizes it. Very often MacOS works very well with MIDI devices.

Maybe Yamaha Motif ES should have a different way to communicate with "To host" connections, but I doubt it. By the way, I would confirm if there aren't any MIDI device registered inside MIDI settings of your MacOS, in order to grant that it is empty, and try to reboot machine and connect again.

I have used my Motif ES8 in USB midi mode with Mainstage for several years now, and never had the problem you describe with assigning the keyboard. I only experienced the problem someone mentioned earlier, when I forgot to set the Motif’s midi mode to USB... then you have to save that setting on the Motif if you want it to power up in that mode every time. It’s easy to forget that last step.

the faders are another story, though. Motif faders dont use standard midi control numbers. They use Sysex messages, so you’d have to do some additional programming to get Mainstage to recognize them. I have never bothered with that, so I have nothing to offer there.

You may be able to assign the Motif faders to transmit MIDI if you're in master mode(page 136).

I'm not familiar at all with the Motif but I use ControllerMate in my setup; it may be that it can translate what the Motif outputs from faders intro something useful; it has a free trial.