The Qs300 - What It Is And What It Can Do - Yamaha QS300 Owner's Manual

The QS300 — What It Is and What It Can Do
Built into the QS300 are an advanced tone generator,
with comprehensive editing functions, three digital
multi-effect sections, and a full-featured sequencer
for recording and editing your performances, and a
flexible automatic accompaniment system that
produces complete backing in a variety of styles. The
QS300 also has a floppy disk drive, for storing and
organizing your important data.
Tone Generator Section
The tone generator of the QS300 features 954 high-
quality Voices, in 47 different Voice Banks. (See the
separate "Sound Lists & MIDI Data" supplement.) It
also provides complete compatibility with General
MIDI and the new XG-MIDI format, and gives you
full 32-note polyphony for even the most complex
song data. A set of comprehensive Voice editing
functions lets you create your own User Voices. (See
Voice Editing below.) And there's internal memory
space for saving up to 128 User Voices — plus unlim-
ited storage capacity with the floppy disk drive.
Effect Sections
The three effect sections of the QS300 — Reverb,
Chorus and Variation — provide an enormous variety
of tools for enhancing the Voices. There are 11 types
of Reverb, 11 types of Chorus, and a full 42 different
Variation effect types, including Delay, Rotary
Speaker, Distortion and Auto Wah.
Voice Editing
The Voice editing functions give you an exceptionally
wide range of controls for changing both the actual
sound of a Voice and how that Voice responds to
various real-time performance controls. Altogether,
these functions give you the power to either subtly
enhance a Voice, or completely change its basic
character.
How to Use This Manual / The QS300 — What It Is and What It Can Do
As its name indicates, the QS300 Music Production Synthesizer is more than just
a synthesizer — it is a fully equipped music production machine that has every-
thing you need to play and produce professional-sounding music.
What It Is
A single Voice can be created by combining up to four
different waveforms, or "Elements." These are the
basic sonic building blocks of the QS300 and there
are 205 waveforms available. These can be assigned
to different sections of the keyboard, played at differ-
ent velocities, with different envelopes, and be given
completely independent filter, pitch EG, tuning and
LFO settings (page 43). This flexibility allows you to
create extremely complex Voices that can shift in
texture and pitch, and change dynamically according
to how you play.
In addition, each Voice that you create can be given
its own volume, velocity response and portamento
settings (page 45).
Sequencer Section — Song Playback and
Recording
The sequencer section features 16 tracks for recording
your own performances (page 97) — either in real
time or manually, by Step recording. Three additional
tracks — Pattern, Chord, and Tempo — let you record
fully automatic backing tracks and tempo changes
(page 119). You can use Punch-in recording to re-
record any part of an already recorded track (page 99).
In addition to independent Voice, pan, volume, tuning
and effect send settings, each track's Voice can have
different filter and vibrato settings, velocity response,
and even be given independent EG and MIDI control-
ler settings (page 71). And all controls are available
in a "mixing console" layout for exceptional ease of
use. Moreover, there are a host of editing functions
— in the Song Jobs (page 139) — for transforming
the recorded data — such as transposing, quantizing,
changing note length and velocity, copying, and much
more.
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