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Jokeyman123

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    Milford, PA
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    Music-performing, composition, arranging all instruments, all styles
    Electronics and computer technology
    kayaking, fishing, woodworking

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  1. Why I keep my keys and other instruments covered. But then, look up "Andy's Gang" to see how he trained animals to play well sort of-its not pretty, but then this was 1950's TV-they got away with alot. why I keep my cats away from my music room-when I can but they sneak in.
  2. I am anxiously waiting to pick up my repaired PX-560 from the Dover repair facility-I dropped it-actually my cat jumped on it and knocked it off the stand!!! The speaker system stopped working, considering the abuse its taken for over 5 years, still plays, records like a champ. The repair turnaround time was excellent, very professional at the desk and on the phone. I will post back after I pick it up this Wednesday. amazing how much one misses an instrument like this when it is down for the count. I have others, but the 560 is still a strong contender at the top of the list-and I own an M3 (baby Oasys) and an Alesis Fusion (another form of a baby Korg Oasys), which are pretty tough competition. It's a tribute to Casio-the PX560s from what I can determine are still available, still being manufactured if I am not mistaken.
  3. Translator, an older version, worked well with my older Ensoniq TS-12 which could read and play samples, it has caused difficulties at least for the auto-sampling function, and only with those of us using it for the Alesis Fusion. I have no experience using it with other forms of the program which are designed for specific workstations, it has several versions dedicated to a particular workstation as well as a universal translator. And yes, auto-slice or split is a different function than a true wave auto-mapper, which requires quite a bit more more programming to get right. I am not criticizing Garth, who created Translator...just trying to say that auto-mapping samples is not an easy task, and if the MZ does it, that's one-up for it. I was just looking over the old Generalmusic Genesys-with its speakers, it is scary how similar it was to the MZ-X500, in appearance and functionality-it was a hybrid arranger with a built-in sequencer, 2 tracks of internal audio recording, a vocal processor and sample importing with a translator....hmmm
  4. Not so simple even with software unless i am mistaken. Every tool I've tried that supposedly has an "auto-assign" function for mapping individual samples to create a multi-sample works poorly or not at al, unless I've missed something. And looking over the MZ-X sample manager I'm not sure the MZ-X can even load compiled multisamples, only individual wav samples, is this correct? There a few freeware programs that can create multisamples-one is called Viena"-not "Vienna"-sounds like a silly distinction but the one is a true sample editor (Viena) and the other is much more complex and focuses on working with its own "virtual" instruments and large sample libraries that are already compiled. The other is called Polyphone. Both these programs will compile a group of individual wav samples into multisamples, and these are designed to create a "soundfont" which would be your final multisample designed to be played on the computer with any program that can load a soundfont-I use "Coolsoft' which is a virtual synth that loads and plays soundfonts in Windows which now lets you play any midi file in your computer with higher quality soundfonts. I know this is getting off-topic, but both polyphone and Viena allow for the creation of multisamples from samples-whether you save these as soundfonts or not. I don't know of any simpler software that can create and assign wav samples to create a playable multisample. I wish i did, even the built-in editors in the expensive workstation keyboards are all fairly complex whether Roland, Korg etc. As I don't think the MZ-X can load and play a complete multi-sample, none of this would do you any good, unless you are willing to use your computer as a "virtual" tone module-you could create multisamples from wavfiles, compile each as a soundfont (sf2) load into coolsoft and play live with the MZ-X connecting the MZ through midi or USB to the computer. If you are using a DAW, or any software midi file editor or player-you can load Coolsoft's virtual synth engine into your DAW or midi player/editor and use that as your synthesizer with whatever soundfont you create. The benefit to this is that soundfont can be one instrument done as very high-quality multisample, or an entire collection of orchestral or other style instruments in one soundfont file, which are easy to fine online, but vary in quality. And then, there is Kontakt......for considerably more money and complexity. I have it, hardly use it. Unfortunately, unless someone else here can post something better, once you open the field of sample editing and compiling into multisamples, it gets way more involved than it should. i wish there was a simpler answer. I have searched for several years trying to find a simple software sample editor that can create a multisample easily-and i have not found any except fot Viena and Polyphone and these are not too simpl either. Thus my complex post. One of the best automappers for wavsamples I found...was the sample mapper included in Casio's IDES 4.0 which I used with the Casio PX575-it was drop-dead easy to load each wavfile sample in its software editor, map it to whatever key range i wanted, and save it as an internal, playable multisample direct from the PX575. If the MZ-X can't do that, I have to wonder why. If it can, you need to use an audio editor such as Audacity or Goldwave, Ocenaudio or something similar (I think Soundforge is still around which I also have) to edit each wavsample, then you still need to compile it into a playable multisample, and that's where it gets complicated with software, or with...well anything! Chicken Systems has "Translator' which has a supposed multisample auto-mapper, but it costs, and it does not work too well. I just tried it yesterday, and it crashed my computer-again. If someone else has better info, post it if you can. I use the Alesis Fusion and Korg M3 for sampling and playing multisamples, and their internal editors are...well I'll leave it at that. Both can load and play (theoretically) soundfonts and can create multisamples internally, but it is definitely not for beginners, and even for advanced users, doesn't always work exactly right.
  5. I just found another solution-but won't work for everything. Toilet paper rolls! I knew these would be good for something. Pretty fed up with these velcro cable ties. Also make nifty little boxes for small gift items-for people you don't like...and a nice pair of fake binoculars. And just so you know chas (you inspired me-again!) I wasn't pulling a Jokeyman stunt, here are 3 anyway. Can only fit 1-2 larger thicker cables, but it is quicker than a twist tie or velcro strip. And one can always go to town...add stickies, gummies, paint in Mardi Gras colors, your country's flag, your bands logo or use em straight up "hard-core" like mine... whatever floats yer boat! Does save some room since I stow these in boxes-I would use your design Chas for the larger cables-I have a few speaker cables over 10 feet long and some large mic and patch cords that will not fit in something like these.
  6. I have suitcase and 2 wood cabinets I had to make for my cables, you're so right. One of them I designed as a seat for my loft space, complete with wheels. when loaded up, which it is, weighs around 30 pounds. And then, computer and video cables-I needed a separate carry case just for those....sigh. I don't even have my shoes organized this well. The worst part-I bought dozens more connecting plugs....to make more audio cables. If i strung all my cables together-I could probably wrap them around my house....twice. Or tether my spaceship to my deck..... but a door rack...hmmm maybe for my shoes.... it is a very good cable idea.
  7. More importantly, another fan of Father Ted are you? So many hysterically funny episodes. "I Shot JR" shirt -Father Ted, I killed a man..... "You don't believe any of that stuff do you Ted? What stuff Dougal? You know, the afterlife and all that.... FreeVee is running all the episodes, one of the few comedies I can watch over and over. I guess one could forgive Stewart Copland for getting Casios mixed up, if he did. Damn fine drummer, he. Liked to tune his kits up high pitches to get that nice Reggae sound.
  8. This might help...whenever you are recording with the song recorder-this seems to hold for all the Casios with the 17-track recorders-you are playing whatever tone (or tones for splits or layers) is selected with the "A" midi channel settings. This includes volume, pan etc. so anything you set through "A" is the "live" Casio keyboard track-which now is recorded and re-established in the "B" track-once a song track is recorded it resides as part of the "B" midi channels and track settings. A little confusing, but if you monitor the mixer settings for the "A' and "B" tracks, you can see this. Threw me off for awhile until I understood this. With this design for tones, the "A" track is always live, and is independent of the "B" tracks once these are recorded-including the mixer settings which can now be changed and saved with panel record. But whatever settings you initially decided upon when playing live-are part of the temporary 'A" track until you record that tone into the song recorder track and will show up as your recorded track settings. Seems a little "roundabout' way of doing it-but this way your loudness setting for your "live" tone which you can monitor with the mixer "A" section in particular can be set independently of the already recorded other tracks. This is important because you can keep you live track-the one you are playing from the keys-dynamically dominant from your already recorded accompaniment or other already recorded tracks. You can bring down the levels of your other tracks with the mixer in the song recorder, but now play your live track louder as your lead, effectively making sure your other tracks don't overpower your existing tracks. Think of the Casio as 3 separate midi instruments in a sense-the "live' part on "A", the song recorder tracks on "B" and-if it is like my PX560-the "C" midi channels can be used separately as a tone module for a DAW or external midi sequencer. You can play a full arrangement recorded in the song recorder-all 17 tracks-and play another complete set of 16 tracks from a connected computer or external sequencer and monitor those settings with the mixer set to monitor "C". Pretty powerful if you think about it, makes the Casio a 32-track instrument-and this isn't including the live "A" track you are going to play. Brad correct me if I'm wrong. i don't have my CTK or WK anymore, only the PX560 and XW.
  9. The difficulty I've found comparing-well almost every keyboard there is in the last 10 years or so-I really see no ground-shaking new technology in just about anything-including the most costly Montages/Kronos/Rolands/Kurzweils-and sadly, seeing a rather dumbing down of the quality, even with the big names seeming to revert to plasticky keyframes. The Casio PX560 has held its ground, and i have most recently been composing, rehearsing with the Korg M3 and Alesis Fusion in addition to the 560 for quite awhile. Virtual instruments-I get it only so far as even the best emulations-Garritan Orchestra, the costly virtual pianos-after years of struggling with every incarnation of Windows and Apple OS's-and a dozen DAW's large and small-hasn't been worth the struggle. An example-Kontakt, one of the more popular sample-based virtual instrument programs, is actually emulating many of the best workstations! i know this because I have followed sound designers and developers over the years, and have seen that many very accomplished creators originally designed sounds for the big hardware workstations-have now been now porting over alot of their work to programs like Kontakt-because this is what is selling. But put me in a studio with a bunch of real instruments and musicians (even drummers well I do that too) mixing consoles and PA systems, now that's living! I digress. I am not new to computer music software-I started with the Atari 520ST-FM and all its original music programs-and honestly, all i see is more complexity, and more of the spontaneity of music creation being either taken over completely by the technology (the M3 is a prime example of this-I push a button and entire film score comes out), and then Karma takes a degree in computer science to create anything that makes sense-the developer did, but doesn't leave much for me to do), or making the process so complex as to render any real immediate musical creation difficult to impossible. One of the joys of being a musician has been the ability to spontaneously create-with real instruments and sounds-to be immersed in the experience. All this virtual music and technology is like looking at a picture of a pizza instead of eating a real one! I read a warning statement in one of my history books from a Chinese ruler who was worried that as technology was evolving, it was taking away people's abilities to be available to do anything useful-this was over 2000 years ago. I guess he was wrong, but lately I'm beginning to wonder. what has savd us I guess is that there will always be something rewarding about just hitting something with a stick to get a sound....and then being able to do the same with a group of other stick beaters/pickers/bow rubbers/tonsil ticklers or any other real physical motion that gets some kind of sound out!
  10. I had a long post about this which I've deleted since it over-complicated what I think you need to know. As long as you are saving or editing anything in the CTK/WK series-within the CTK-it will retain your tones whether for an auto-arranger file or a song file. The A and B mixer settings are distinctly separate so that you can have an entirely different set of tones recorded and saved for your CMS arranger rhythms, and then record 16 more tracks with the song recorder, which can now use entirely different tones independent of the auto-arranger tones. Saving the auto-arranger tones to the song recorder B tracks will not solve the problem, because once you now start using .mid midi files-this introduces another problem, and i don't think the CMS converter solves it. Midi files have both program change and bank change messages embedded in their "header" which may or may not match the tones you want in your arranger files, because these by default-if it is a standard midi file (SMF) will default to program and bank change messages using the general midi (GM) set of tones. The CMS converter as far as I see, does the same thing-it will always use the GM tones which will play correctly in the Casio, assuming the software programmer designed it this way which I'm pretty sure he did. Here's the problem. The Casio CTK will save exactly what you want it to save in its header, if you save your work as it says in the manual-but once you save this as a CMS arranger file, it is re-setting the midi tones to the GM soundset, not the tones you set originally, unless you used only the GM sounds with their corresponding bank change messages. I think this is what the problem is. If one could save bank change messages from within the CMS converter, that would solve the problem but apparently it defaults to the GM sounds-which makes sense as an older program as this was and is the only "standard" for making sure a converted file will sound right if used as an arranger or song file.
  11. I no longer have any Casios that load and play CMS files-but from what I just tried-there is a simple opening screen that simply says "select midi file"-all you do is click the tab-it opens part of your windows explorer file/folder in order for you to navigate to where your midi file is-you click on that-it opens another window prompting you to name that file before it converts it, then you click "save" in the lower right corner of the screen and that's it-it automatically saves it in the foider where the CMS Converter is. I can load some screenshots if you want to see. It is such an old type interface, it does not prompt you once the file is saved, it just saves it and returns you to the original small window, in order to convert another .mid file. I'm not sure because I can't test it with a keyboard anymore, but it may need a type "0" midi file rather than a type "1". I tried both types and it looks like it converted and saved both types.
  12. I don't know anything about the MZX and CTX specifically, but here's some interesting facts I've discovered re auto-accompaniment patterns. I have dozens of Yamaha PSR-540 .sty files to play with, I forgot from where, and simply changing the file extension from .sty to .mid makes these files (at least these 540 rhythm files) playable as midi files-which I use in XGWorks or any midi file player, DAW, etc. I also used some of these to design my own auto-accompaniment styles playable in the Casios. Another surprise-Band-in-a-Box which can be surprisingly useful even after all these years-can play these Yamaha .sty files-since Band-in-a-Box uses the same file extension for its styles. However-the Band-in-a-Box .sty files will not play if changed over to a .mid file. Is this of any use to anybody? Who knows...but thought you all might be interested to know this "factoid" about the .sty files, but I recall each generation of Yamaha arranger, the styles are not always cross-compatible between their own keyboards-and thus may not always "behave" when trying to convert from one form to another. I've also done this with Korg styles too. Is any of this legal? Probably as long as I only use for myself and to re-sell. I take copyright seriously. If you think big brother isn't paying attention, remember "torrents" and the "Pirates Den", and many others which are now "Lost in Space".
  13. Checking my own 560, I regularly use a 16GB Sandisk Cruzer thumb drive with no problems. Page 91 in the manual describes a capacity of up to 32GB for a drive. And yes, I have never heard of a thumb drive with 7.5GB capacity-although with Windows, it may be reading a "system volume folder" on the drive if there is one, and this might take up some of the capacity of the thumb drive-Windows automatically puts a "system volume drive" on any drive that is formatted in Windows and a user cannot erase this unless you have "administrator privileges". I don't think this should be causing a problem though, it hasn't for me.
  14. Formatting the drive as FAT32 with a computer is not enough. Unless the drive was originally formatted in the PX560 where it will create a directory/folder named MUSICDAT, you must create a folder manually with your computer on your thumb drive labelled as MUSICDAT, which will be empty until you start saving anything into this folder from the PX560. Or... Silly as it seems, the USB port might simply be dusty or oxidized (it happens even when relatively new). I would "exercise" the port a few times-just insert and take out the thumb drive a few times, which should get those tiny electrical connections working, if that is the problem although if you used a few thumb drives already, probably not. And as Mike said, my PX560 does take 10-20 seconds or so initially to "see" a new thumb drive, even if all these other conditions are taken care of. And do you insert the thumb drive before...or after you power up the 560? Try both. or possibly you did already....it is possible the USB port is electrically failing but I've used mine many times, and its still OK.
  15. Will be awkward with the strap configuration as it looks now-I'm thinking something more inline with a Bigsby vibrato type attachment- even as an attachment to an existing whammy bar or Bigsby if it didn't offer too much additional resistance. I have re-fitted all my electric guitars with Bigsbys and roller bridges except for one archtop.
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