Workstations are many people's favoured method of working, but they don't offer the ease-of-use and flexibility of a computer setup. Yamaha's W7 aims to make workstation life easier, and comes close to converting Roger Brown...

Putting sequences together is an individual business, and for every one of us who loves using their computer to chain those moments of inspiration together, there is another who finds all that on-screen information distracting, and just wants to get on with the business of making music. Workstations are ideal for this style of working, allowing the player to simply press record and start playing, with no distracting bar count display to divert attention at the crucial moment and mess up your timing.

The problem with the workstation approach in the past has been when you come to edit all your funky phrases. Moving bar numbers about and quantising on fiddly 16 character LCDs is not the easiest of jobs, and often the simplest approach is to re-record it all into a sequencer and do your final editing from there.

The W7 offers a way out of that impasse, featuring a large, clear display and easy-to-follow operating system. With as many soft functions as possible hardwired to front panel buttons, editing becomes a whole lot easier. There's even a virtual mixer with pan pots, as featured in software sequencers, for that final mixdown.

Theory

The W7 is at heart a GM synth, using Yamaha's proprietary AWM tone generation system. AWM stands for Advanced Wave Memory, and refers to Yamaha's algorithms for storing samples to use as a basis for S+S (Sample and Synthesis).

This is a tried and tested method of producing a usable sound set, and most GM synths use some variation on this. Yamaha have been at it for longer than most, and consequently the W7's GM set is one of the best, with clear, clean pianos, guitars and strings, some excellent deep basses and the usual complement of organs, dulcimers and the rest of the GM sound set, culminating in the inevitable Applause and Gunshot samples.

There are a total of 10 Drum kits, ranging from the GM standard through Jazz, Rock, Analog, Electro and a Classic kit, plus the SY85 and QY10 preset kits. They're all highly usable, and whatever your style of music there is a kit to suit your needs here. Only eight of them are accessible from the GM page 'though; the SY85 and QY10 kit are only accessible from the preset banks.

The W7 boasts two more banks besides the GM bank of 128 sounds, with a further 128 preset tones, plus the aforementioned two extras in ROM. On top of that is a further RAM slot, for another 128 voices of your own devising, which also has space for two more drum kits. There is even another optional RAM slot, for yet another bank of 128 plus drums. That's 512 voices and 14 drum kits, so finding the right sound should never be a problem. But it also means a lot of partials, so musicians who use lots of chords may find note-stealing creeping in on those particularly florid patches. In practice, however, this shouldn't be too much of a problem for most of us.

"The editing functions certainly are extensive enough to make this more than just a workaday synth"

The onboard sequencer boasts 16 banks of 128 song voice memories, and 16 banks of two-song drum voice memories for storing your song voicings, so recalling elaborate setups is a breeze. Think of it as an onboard librarian for your patches, and you'll recognise the way Yamaha have adopted the best of computer sequencing and synth editing software to direct the setup of the W7. This not only makes the W7 easy to use for those players who simply want to use the machine as a recording device, but also makes it accessible to those of us who understand computer sequencers better.

The sequencer allows you to store 16 songs of 16 tracks in its memory, and of course all of this can be saved to MS-DOS compatible disks, making the W7 almost indecently eager to communicate with computers. It can also read standard MIDI files as well as its own proprietary format songs, which also store the mixer and effects information along with the voice memories.

When it comes to effects, the W7 is no slouch. There are the usual global effects in voice mode, but in multi mode up to three effects may be applied to different voices, and their levels controlled from the mixer. Adding just the right chorus to a string patch and some sizzle to your snares with a smidgen of gated reverb is right up the W7's alley. The editable multi, or Insert effects in Yamaha's repertoire include a 3 band EQ, choruses and flangers, phasers and the dreaded auto partner, alongside the more usual delay, reverb gates and rooms, plus a wide variety of distortion effects.

Global effects are limited to a set of reverb, chorus and delay/reverb modules, which between them contain a total of 40 different editable effects. These are more powerful than their multi cousins of course, grabbing all the available processing power available to them in voice mode for some truly quality reverbs.

Practice

The voices coming in for all this treatment are not of the variety of S+S which require bucketfulls of reverb to give them life though. In the past, I would have recommended a Roland GM unit to anyone after dazzlingly bright pianos and strings, but Yamaha have certainly packed the best of the SY85 voice architecture in here, and the pianos and strings are quite simply superb.

From clear, bright dance pianos to full, resonant classical tones and darker rock sounds, the W7's GM set cannot be faulted. The basses in particular are wonderful, with dry, sharp funk and slap basses, as well as nicely resonant synth and electric basses. A more than perfunctory classical selection of woodwinds, strings and brasses completes the GM palette, and composers specialising in film and soundtrack work could put in quite a creditable effort without straying far from here.

The preset bank is a little less perfect. I did detect some clicks on the sustain section of a few pad patches, but not enough to fully ruin the usefulness of the various piano/strings, organ and generally soundtrack type patches on offer here. This seems to be more a bank for dipping into for those odd moments of inspiration, or to add a little extra something to the final mix. It also provides a convenient stepping stone for developing your own variations, and saving them to the Internal RAM bank.

Although the W7 lacks the SY85's ability to import samples as raw material for building voices, the architecture is much the same, and anyone who has programmed S+S synths will have no difficulty navigating the clear on screen displays. The front panel of the W7 has eight function keys immediately beneath its display screen, and the action this key performs on any given page is indicated just above it on the display.

This arrangement does away with a lot of the page scrolling which was a feature of earlier operating systems, which used smaller display screens and less hardwired buttons. There's enough options to provide flexibility, but not so many that you begin to feel bewildered. Yamaha have devised a system that is as friendly as possible without turning the W7 into a full blown computer or a button-festooned behemoth.

For those unfamiliar with S+S, basically the W7 allows you to assemble up to four elements, which are AWM samples, into an algorithm which you then sculpt into a usable sound.

This is done by adjusting the pitch, amplitude, filtering and LFO rate plus pitch, amplitude and frequency modulation of each element, as well as adding effects to the final patch. As each one of these parameters is clearly marked and accessible as outlined above, experimentation is positively encouraged for professional and novice alike.

This can even be done while the sequencer is playing in real time, for both fine-tuning voices in situ, or even for shape shifting. Voice parameters can be mapped to MIDI controllers, allowing you to not only control your realtime editing from external controllers such as a foot pedal or modulation wheel, but also to record those in-place edits for subsequent replay. The editing functions certainly are extensive enough to make this more than just a workaday synth. Nor are its GM and preset voices as restricted as some, increasing the W7's versatility and offering something for everyone.

Verdict

The W7 certainly is a powerful synthesis machine, and that friendly interface makes it almost as intuitive to use as is possible within the workstation format. To those who are already aficionados of this style of working, the W7 will simply seem a logical step forward. To those who could never get to grips with all that number-crunching and LCD-peering, the W7 will be a revelation.

My only gripe is the lack of a facility to load your own samples in, as on the SY85. If the W7 had that, it might even convert this hardened software sequencist to the workstation approach!

Check out Roger's exploration of the western reaches of the W7's GM tones, and decide whether it's up your musical street.