How do you customize your keyboard?

How do I customize voices on my Yamaha S80 Keyboard?

• I am sick of the piano sounds on the S80 and I wouldn't mind having better synth sounds either. I would like to take advantage of MIDI to either import new and better voices or project/customize them from a laptop (I have a macbook pro). I have never used MIDI before, and I don't know where to begin. What is the easiest road to take to bring new life to my 7.5 year-old S80?

• Answer:

  I know this is an old question, but I definitely have an answer for you or any other curious folks. The Yamaha S80 shares the same architecture as the CS6X, which Yamaha marketed as THE trance/electronic synth. Patches for the Yamaha CS6x can be downloaded via the Yahoo users group. A guy named JayB created some amazing patches for the S80, geared towards electronic music, which you can find here: http://www.jaybmusic.net/Sounds.php To load these into your S80, you will need a Compact Flash adapter. No MIDI necessary. Throw the files on a compact flash card attached to your computer, take that out, and put that card into the back of the S80. Refer to the users manual and load up your new sounds. Enjoy!