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Nice Sax - How Achieved?


AlenK

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I like those slides, but how are they initiated? Are those articulations "built in" to the tone to be triggered by how you play, much as on a Tyros, or are they added some other way? I would ask the video's author but I think I'm likely to get a clearer answer here. :) 

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The Versatile Tones (VTs) are the ones that have all of the tone articulations, correct? Looks like a few more VTs were added in V1.4; just guitars and brass for now. I hope Casio is working on more of them. But nice that you can make your own within the limits of the Hex Layer engine.

 

I'm surprised that Casio isn't highlighting these capabilities. The videos so far haven't done a good job of that, just as they haven't done a good job of showing off the improvements in the drawbar organ engine. They've got a powerhouse of a keyboard here and it's being virtually ignored by most of the keyboard world, as far as I can tell. One decent review by Keyboard magazine (now merged with EM, as you know) isn't going to make people sit up and take notice. It's my impression that the XW synths got far more attention in their day.

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Is there any way to buy / download / otherwise obtain these KMP Studio saxophone samples and program(s)?  Can't find anything but the demos online...

 

Old jazz guys looking for old jazz sounds should check out my Deagan vibraphone samples/programs (in the MZX user download section)...much better that the stock vibraphone sounds, IMHO...

 

df

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 I want to buy a MZ-X500 when a model with 76 keys is coming on market. An with some of the new things suggested in this thread.


I am following this thread - and although i dont yet have a MZ-X500 i have heard it on youtube and think its a really fantastic good keyboard which is very unexposed. In Copenhagens biggest Music store they dont even have it in the shop. Nor do they have the great XW-G1 or XW-P1.


But if Casio is going to make sounds like these from youtube I will go immediately and buy a MZ-X500.

 


This Brothers in Arms sound is from a Tyros Keyboard. The Sound is called Rockhero. And the guy have modified it with the tone internal modifying in the Tyros itself. It must be like the new Casio The Versatile Tones (VT). Very nice expression of an distorded Guitar on the edge of Breakup.


And i want 3 different U2 rhythms like Streets With No Name and Havent Found What im looking for and this Edge Guitar rhythm sound:

 


I know that MZ-X500 have a few Versatile Tones (VT). But nothing as good as the above.

 

And here are Tones from Yamaha Tyros with high quality worth copying to Casio The Versatile Tones (VT)

 

I have a 5 year old Casio Wk-7500 and when i went to Copenhagens biggest musicshop i tried all of their pianoes. Also very expensive ones. None of them sounded as good as the piano sound in the Wk-7500. And i know that in the MZ-X500 Casio have made them even better. Thanks Casio.

 

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You can make your own versitile tones using the MZX sample manager app. Everything is there to create them.  More velocity switched samples than a standard hex tone is possible. 

 

Is there a manual for that? I didn't see one on the Casio support site. If there isn't one, it may be one reason why these capabilities aren't better known out there, besides the astounding lack of advertising of them: Casio's online copy only mentions that you can sample and then assign to pads!

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And here are Tones from Yamaha Tyros with high quality worth copying to Casio The Versatile Tones (VT)

 

 

 

Sure, those are good. The MZ-X500 should be able to do some of them. Its VT tones are a step in the right direction but they are comparable to Yamaha's MegaVoices, which are years old, not to Super Articulation voices, much less Super Articulation 2 voices, which are even more advanced. Bear in mind that the Tyros 5 sells for well over four times what the MZ-X500 does. 

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Thanks. I missed that. What I wanted to know is on page 16. So "More velocity switched samples than a standard hex tone" turns out to be eight key or velocity splits on a single layer for a mono tone or four splits for a stereo tone. Usable. 

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Let me try to cover all of the important points and clarify things. 

 

"Wave" as referenced in hex layer editing and the Casio sample manager for MZX: A program that contains 1 or more mono audio files (a.k.a. samples).  Each sample in a wave is mapped to a specific key range and tuned for that range. 

 

Stereo tones are created by using two wave's, panned left and right. Layered tones combine more than 1 wave. Velocity switched tones combine more than 1 wave. An example of this is the Concert Grand piano tone found in Privia's and MZX. That tone uses 8 wave's. Each wave contains a number of discrete audio samples.  4 pairs of (left and right) mono wave's are used to created 4 stereo velocity switched levels which form the basis for that piano sound.   

 

Hex layer tones can velocity switch or layer up to 6 wave's. Melody tones are one layer but can velocity switch up to 8 wave's.  To create stereo, those numbers have to be divided in half since 2 waves are required for stereo. 

 

The Casio sample manager app allows users to create their own waves for the MZX series as ZTN melody tones with wave data or.....for the MZ-X500....also as ZLT hex layer tones with wave data. Once imported to MZ-X500 memory, user waves are available for use in all hex layer editing, not just the ZLT or ZTN file the wave was created for.  

 

On the MZX series, a single user ZTN or ZLT file with wave data can import up to 128 mono audio files.  This number is divided among all layers and/or velocity levels of the tone. The distribution of those 128 files is flexible. A single velocity level melody tone can have 128 mono samples. An 8 velocity level melody tone can still have 128 samples. The distribution of those 128 samples among velocity levels is up to you.  Another note, if you're loading stereo audio WAV files into the sample manager for melody tone creation, the app will automatically create two mono waves (left and right) for use in that tone.  So each stereo sample counts as two mono.  

 

The MZX series will obey loop markers in WAV files when creating tones with the sample manager. Loop markers must be embedded into WAV files using external software before import into the Casio sample manager.  

 

Sample manager created tones with wave data will load much faster when the file size is kept to a minimum.  Larger files will take longer to load when recalling the tone during performance.  

 

 

 

 

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Great information but I already knew the first five paragraphs and most of the sixth. (I didn't know about automatically making two mono waves from a stereo one but it makes perfect sense since that is the way the waves are organized in memory.) 

 

But I understand that you're writing for everyone's benefit. Nevertheless, I do hope that this detailed response ("clarifying things") wasn't triggered by my careless use of the word "samples" when I meant multisamples. Obviously, I understood it myself be the latter, for one thing because the number of key/velocity spits in a Hex Layer tone is only 1. (And before you clarify that I actually should have said "wave," which contains more data than a multisample - yeah, I know.) 

 

PS. As I said before I think eight velocity levels is quite useable for sound creation. You shouldn't need more than that. It's not substantially more than the six possible with Hex Layer mode but hey...more is more.

 

.

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Revisiting the sax video in the first post. I'm still convinced he is doing it with velocity triggered samples, BUT......the MZX has a solo sax tone that is very close to the sound in that video minus the slides.  If one was to create a hex layer tone with the solo sax wave and enable the hex tone's chromatic legato portamento function, chromatic slides trigger when notes are played legato.  It's not quite the same sound as heard in the video, but similar.  Sampled slides is the most realistic sounding way to do it no matter.  Chromatic slides with portamento are best sounding when triggered between notes within an octave or less.  

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I suspect that the pitch transitions for chromatic portamento are too "sharp." You would need to round off the edges at least a little bit.

 

I wonder if perhaps instead a "sampled pitch form", e.g., a Gliss Down or Trumpet Fall, was initiated with a pad while playing a note with the built-in tenor sax sound and that was recorded into the X500. Perhaps this was done on a series of notes across the keyboard and from these samples a new wave was constructed. Then this wave was assigned to a velocity range either in a custom melody Tone or a Hex Layer tone. I also hear a rising slide as well so perhaps a Gliss Up was used in the same process on yet another velocity layer. I know what a trumpet fall sounds like but not what the Gliss Down and Gliss Up pitch forms sound like in their various versions (which I am guessing are different numbers of total semitone steps). Maybe they are not "rounded" enough.

 

Mega Voices level technology, as I said, but obviously usable. Some day maybe Casio will give us programmable triggering of waves by way of logical combinations of triggering rules (e.g., layer 1 triggered when legato condition is true AND interval is within a fourth). 

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What I heard is simple in sax. Created a ZTN with the last layer making these slides down and up.
What we need to know now are the proper parameters for creating ZTN without overloading the system.
In the SAMPLER MANAGER manual you can use up to 2.5mb.
Should have an average here from someone who uses the advanced features of sample to limit parameter.
Example:
ZTN = 2.5mb per tone
ZDR = xx mb per drum set
Regions where you can edit a sampler (Bass E2-G4)

Casio could have officially optimized ZTNs for reference in creating ZTNs.
This is valid for ZDRs too
 

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  • 6 months later...
On 2/25/2017 at 4:33 PM, BradMZ said:

You can make your own versitile tones using the MZX sample manager app. Everything is there to create them.  More velocity switched samples than a standard hex tone is possible. 

How do I get the MZX sample manager app?  No results on App Store for iOS.

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