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Versatile Tones / Articulations / Realism


Tson

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I WANT an MZ-X500, mostly due to the awesome videos from Ralph Maten on YouTube.  (I suspect he has done some serious custom editing on his MZ to do what he does.). :2thu:

If the MZ-X500 was 76 keys, I would have bought one already.  (Maybe for NAMM in January...please Casio!) :banghead:

So...articulations.  I can't get my hands on an MZ anywhere but I played the Yamaha PSR-S970 yesterday and the Super Articulations are ... WOW!  Can the MZ-X500 create these articulations (fret slides, keyoffs) in the melody hand while playing (like the Yamaha) or do I have to hit pads or special keys in the lower register to trigger these random (but gorgeous) nuances?  I looked at the Appendix pg 15, referencing "Versatile Tones" but I'm still not clear on this.  Thanks all.

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58 minutes ago, BradMZ said:

The guitars do have various nuances like body slaps, muted picked strings, fret slides, string noises and various other sounds.  These are triggered by velocity and by keys outside of the normal range for guitar.  For example, some guitar tones have velocity triggered fret slides.

 

 

 

       ....including this other WOW! factor: 

 

                  Yamaha PSR-S970  (61 keys):  £1,737    Bax shop

 

                  Casio MZ-X500       (61 keys):  £680       Bax shop

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  • 2 months later...

BradMZ, I am re-visiting this post because FINALLY I was able to find an MZ to try out...in Singapore!. I had to travel half way around the world to get my hands on this MZ machine. It was nice to finally get to play one and try out the Tones. You mentioned above some guitar tones' articulations and nuances being triggered by velocity but I couldn't get it to work the way I expected..  (The demo keyboard I tried had update 1.4).

 

I was frustrated because I could not get the "fret slides" (glissando) and "string squeak" to sound natural while playing. Striking the key harder did not trigger a slide on the standard Guitar Tones I tried.  They seemed to produce no articulations (while playing) other than level/volume. Also, the Versatile Tone guitars (Tone 0463 and 0464) were so sporadic in their velocity triggers, that it sounded terrible.  It was triggering slaps, mutes, harmonics and slides so randomly, I could not get the "exact velocity" to trigger just a nice fret slide or string squeak. I was expecting the versatile tone to give me that Super Articulation feel and sound... but I couldn't do it.

 

The Yamaha PSR-770 and 970 are my comparison keyboards for these guitar Super Articulations.  The sound and nuances are so natural on those keyboards that when I play, it sounds great.  But the Yamaha PSR is at a much higher price point.  I love the capabilities of the MZ, and of course, the price.  So, if I can figure out a way to reproduce a similar guitar sound and nuance in the notes I'm playing, that would be another box I can check off in favor of the MZ.

 

1) Anyway, can you (or anyone) guide me to a specific Tone that emulates this?  Or maybe it's a setting you can help me understand.

 

2) Could you (or someone) direct me to a video that SPECIFICALLY shows these articulations/nuances and the tones used while someone plays.  I am specifically referring to a glissando/fret slide where a guitarist quickly moves across one or two frets while the note is being played, and "string squeak" where you hear the movement of the guitarist's fingers squeaking along the strings as he moves between notes or chords. (Not too much, just enough to make it sound realistic)  I hope that makes sense.

 

Thanks to all.

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I can't understand what is being said in the video (which I have watched before) but it does NOT seem to show triggering of any special articulations like slides or special tones like string squeak, by note-on velocity during regular playing. (String squeak is called "fret noise" by General MIDI despite the frets having nothing to do with it.) Referring to the Versatile Tone mappings shown in the Appendix document, you would need to be quite a skillful player to be able to hit the correct velocity range for the desired articulation.

 

Versatile Tones are analogous to Yamaha's MegaVoice technology, which is easily ten years old now. That's how far behind Casio is at present when it comes to triggering articulations. As Yamaha has repeatedly maintained, MegaVoices are not intended to be played live; instead they are played by specially designed arpeggios, which keyboards like the Motif models have in spades.

 

The MZ-X500 doesn't have anything like Super Articulation (SA) or eXpanded Articulation (XA) or even Korg's version of XA called Defined Nuance Control (DNC), which are themselves fairly old technologies but probably patented, hence effectively unavailable to Casio. And Yamaha progressed to SA2 for the last few years, so they're even further ahead. The MZ-X500 can evidently generate most of the important articulations, unlike previous Casio keyboards, which is a huge step in the right direction. It's just the triggering part that is lacking.

 

That said, if you are willing to create your own custom samples (could even be done by recording articulations from the MZ-X500 itself by the MZ-X500 itself one at a time) you can build tones that allow controllable selection of articulations by velocity. The first video in this thread likely shows something like that. In that thread Brad, CMF's resident MZ-X500 expert and all-around nice guy, provides some great explanations of the MZ-X500's capabilities in that regard. 

 

Strangely enough, I have been able to find only two videos, the one in this thread and the one I posted in the thread I referenced above, that show any special articulations from the MZ-X500 when played "normally" (not counting ones that show articulations triggered by the pads). Maybe there are more and I simply missed them (somehow). 

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Something like THIS is the kind of control of articulations a keyboard like the MZ-X500 should have, obviously with a different kind of interface compatible with Casio's touchscreen UI.

 

 

 

https://www.orangetreesamples.com/products/mind-control

 

As you can see this goes way beyond Yamaha's SA or XA technology. It doesn't even have to be quite so complicated on a Casio keyboard; even two or three simultaneous conditions per articulation would be fine. Heck, I'm sure even the fixed triggering conditions provided by SA would suffice. But SOMETHING beyond just velocity, key release and key position is needed. 

 

It's a point I have made here many times BEFORE I  knew software like this existed (which was about half an hour ago). When it comes to emulating acoustic and electric instruments, this is where the rubber meets the road. 

 

Here's some more from the same people, this time built in to one of their virtual instruments:

 

 

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Here's a patent from 2008 that describes mechanisms to switch between articulations during normal playing as a better solution than the keyswitching typically provided in sample libraries (the MZ-X500 of course doesn't even provide that). If you can understand Patentese it's an interesting read. My point in presenting all of this stuff, some of it ten years old now, is that the concepts have been out there for a while. Heck, they're so old that Casio might well consider using some of them. :lol:

 

 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I don't want to beat a dead horse here but here's a really good example of what a virtual instrument can sound like with and without articulations.

 

Here's without; a violin tone on the Korg PA300: https://soundcloud.com/korg/11-violin.

 

And here's with, a similar passage on the Korg PA900: https://soundcloud.com/korg/pa900-demos-solo-11.

 

Yes, the violin samples on the PA900 are also better than the ones on the PA300 (less scratchy, at any rate) but the PA900's ability to do legato and slides makes the emulation more believable. 

 

 

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Ok let's look at this In perspective we are talking about very cheap workstation which if it had different name (company)would cost at least twice the price now it happens that I have Kronos after I sold Montage and this two are better than MZ and they cost  in Kronos case five times more so when people compare MZ  with much more expensive  keyboards I personally find that funny I still have MZ and I am enjoying it beside my Kronos  I don't compare them because it is useless to do it just enjoy what MZ offers for very cheap price.

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I think the more apt comparison would be to arrangers like Korg's PA line. The PA600 is the lowest cost PA model to feature Korg's DNC (Defined Nuance Control). Although the MSRP of the PA600 is a couple of hundred US dollars more than the MZ-X500, it currently "streets" for a hundred dollars less. So it's in the ballpark, pricewise. Besides the DNC sounds, which are a good example of the kind of articulation control I'm talking about, the PA600 gives you a bigger (7-inch), higher-resolution touchscreen and Korg's second-generation Guitar Mode 2. On the downside it has half the polyphony of the MZ-X500 (128 vs 256), lacks the MZ-X500's 4x4 matrix of velocity-sensitive pads, doesn't do its own audio sampling and has less memory for user samples (96MB vs 256MB). Although the PA600 doesn't have a equivalent to Hex Layer mode it allows up to 24 oscillators per voice before filtering.  

 

Could Casio add something like DNC to the MZ-X500? Technically, of course they could and it shouldn't cost much to do because the MZ-X500 apparently has most of the required samples already included. It is only missing the logic for selecting them in real time based on player actions. 

 

The whole point of including sampled sounds in a keyboard is to emulate real instruments. It's been clear almost from the beginning that you need a variety of articulations in order to do that adequately. Unless you are content controlling those articulations over MIDI then a keyboard needs to provide intuitive ways to trigger them during live play. In other words, the emulation has to act as much as possible like a real instrument. 

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On 1/4/2018 at 7:30 AM, AlenK said:

I think the more apt comparison would be to arrangers like Korg's PA line. The PA600 is the lowest cost PA model to feature Korg's DNC (Defined Nuance Control). Although the MSRP of the PA600 is a couple of hundred US dollars more than the MZ-X500, it currently "streets" for a hundred dollars less. So it's in the ballpark, pricewise. Besides the DNC sounds, which are a good example of the kind of articulation control I'm talking about, the PA600 gives you a bigger (7-inch), higher-resolution touchscreen and Korg's second-generation Guitar Mode 2. On the downside it has half the polyphony of the MZ-X500 (128 vs 256), lacks the MZ-X500's 4x4 matrix of velocity-sensitive pads, doesn't do its own audio sampling and has less memory for user samples (96MB vs 256MB). Although the PA600 doesn't have a equivalent to Hex Layer mode it allows up to 24 oscillators per voice before filtering.  

 

Could Casio add something like DNC to the MZ-X500? Technically, of course they could and it shouldn't cost much to do because the MZ-X500 apparently has most of the required samples already included. It is only missing the logic for selecting them in real time based on player actions. 

 

The whole point of including sampled sounds in a keyboard is to emulate real instruments. It's been clear almost from the beginning that you need a variety of articulations in order to do that adequately. Unless you are content controlling those articulations over MIDI then a keyboard needs to provide intuitive ways to trigger them during live play. In other words, the emulation has to act as much as possible like a real instrument. 

 

MX500 polyphony is 128 ;-)

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Yes, articulation are great, esp. if you’re able to play them in real time.  

 

Is there a guitar strum mode with the X500?  I love many of the guitar sounds on this board.  I’ve always been envious of the guitars ability to create a full, rich sound with simple strumming, something i’ve never been able to re-create on the keyboard.  I suppose auto accompaniment, creating guitar strumming chords from you left hand playing would be one way to do that, but it’d probably be pretty static.

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@ Brad, thanks, i’ll check that out

 

@ AlenK, thanks for sharing those links, you can really customize using those settings!  At some point down the road they’ll have sophisticated software like that that you set up initially, and then be able to use it on a board w/o being connected to a computer!

 

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Brad, tried all the arp patterns, none of them give you a guitar strum.

 

i would think that’s something that would have to be handled by an auto accompaniment pattern, given that its based on chords and not a fixed pattern.  Unless there is a way to get the arps to follow your chords.

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  • 10 months later...
On 12/11/2017 at 10:00 AM, AlenK said:

Here's a patent from 2008 that describes mechanisms to switch between articulations during normal playing as a better solution than the keyswitching typically provided in sample libraries (the MZ-X500 of course doesn't even provide that). If you can understand Patentese it's an interesting read. My point in presenting all of this stuff, some of it ten years old now, is that the concepts have been out there for a while. Heck, they're so old that Casio might well consider using some of them. :lol:

 

Casio would have to figure out their own way of doing it, though, since patents last for 20 years.

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Polyphony on the PX560 is 256. Not shabby.

         

Model

PX-560MBE
Keyboard
88-key piano keyboard
• Velocity resolution: 16,256 maximum
• Layer, Split
• Duet: 4 octaves (–2 to 0 to +2)
• Transpose: 2 octaves (–12 to 0 to +12)
• Octave shift: 4 octaves (–2 to 0 to +2)
• Key off velocity
Sound Source
• Number of Tones: 650
Melody Tones: Preset 532/User 280
Hex Layer Tones: Preset 100/User 100
Drum Sounds: Preset 18/User 20
• Maximum polyphony: 256 notes
• Touch Response (3 sensitivity levels, Off)
• Tuning: 415.5 Hz to 440.0 Hz to 465.9 Hz (0.1 Hz units)
• Temperament: Equal temperaments plus 16 other types
• Stretch Tuning: On, Of
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On 11/12/2018 at 12:33 PM, anotherscott said:

 

Casio would have to figure out their own way of doing it, though, since patents last for 20 years.

 

Well, sure, but Korg, Yamaha and Roland have each done their own implementations of triggering articulations different enough to co-exist. Casio could do likewise. 

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