MZ-2000 Thread

[Jokeyman123]

Bradge-you might want to try this.....Record the MZ styles into a computer midi editor-I've posted on the PX560 with Chandler about how to do the entire process. get the IDES 4.0 software program. I also found XGWorks by Yamaha the easiest freeware midi editor for recording multiple tracks in one pass-I record all auto-accompaniment tracks at once out of my other older auto-arrangers and save as a mid file (SMF).  I think you can do that with the MZ-2000 (I almost bought one recently too but out of Germany shipping was more expensive than the keyboard!) 

 

Now you open the section of IDES 4.0 that will do the midi to ckf conversion-will only allow for 2 of everything- variations, fills, intros endings. This software lets you set the "markers" the parts of your midi file that will make up each section of the ckf rhythm file. Select convert and now you have a .ckf that can be played-with s few adjustments possibly-on any Casio that can play a ckf rhythm. I've converted Roland, Yamaha and some from my software midi file collections to create a dozen or so I have been using on my PX560 and older PX575. The final step is to get the ckf rhythm player-developed by a 3rd-party-small program-but very useful for our Casios-this is not the Casio ckf converter, which is something entirely different, I like the IDES 4.0 converter.  The ckf rhythm player (not the converter) allows you to preview what the rhythm file will sound like-for each individual part-before you save it to a thumb drive or sd card. And this program also lets you re-assign tones, loudness, banks for each part. Might still have to octave shift some of the bass parts, depending on what you are using for the midi file. I also set each midi channel in midi editor first-to correspond with the right channels for auto-accompaniment. the PX560 for example uses midi channel 10 for drums (typical) 11 for basslines and 12, 13, 14 for additional chordal or accompaniment parts-can be anything.

 

The only drawback-most older rhythms used the basic GM soundsets-especially if you cross brands-but you can change the bank send messages in the ckf rhythm player and resave the file with that before you try it in the keyboard. I manually change sounds to the better "extended' =-non GM tones in the PX560 with its internal rhythm editor-i cannot create rhythm accompaniments from scratch with the PX560, but I can change tones, panning, levels and chorus/reverb send levels, and re-save in the PX560 if I need to, probably similar to the process with the MZ-X330/500.

 

Check out the uploads I placed in the PX560 uploads section-might find something interesting. these are all .ckfs I converted from other auto-arrangers and as I said before, from a huge collection of midi files I've save over the years. I tend to favor less conventional jazz/fusion styles and are a bit more complex re chord changes and keys to improvise over, but this process can be used of course for anything. Perhaps you like a nice hybrid heavy metal polka accompaniment-yes there is such a thing-look it up. I live in PA I have to be careful what I say about polkas or they'll make me move back to New Jersey! 

[TheBradge]

Brad, that's too bad. But i might be able to sell some of the styles i create anyway since there aren't many available, and i trnd to make something for everyone hehe (And cheap i might add!)

 

Jokey, that sounds so confusing, and too much of a hassle.. So maybe it's for other CMFers but not for me lol, but thanks!!

[Brad Saucier]

1 minute ago, TheBradge said:

But i might be able to sell some of the styles i create anyway since there aren't many available, and i trnd to make something for everyone hehe (And cheap i might add!)

 

Just a heads up, selling or self-promotion is not allowed on this site or in the Facebook group.  

[Jokeyman123]

And I will add, downloading anything I have uploaded and using for commercial use-selling to anyone is illegal, here and elsewhere. I upload content strictly for users here for education and personal, not to sell to someone else or for any type of commercial use. if I find my content being used for someone's website, i will request the system administrator take it down. Some of my content is not original, and if other music companies detect copyright violations, I and I'm sure the administrators will take it down immediately, and I will be happy to do that. As I have been warned by someone else here, the big players search the Internet for copyright violations and have the power to shut a website or user down. Check out Youtube posts, it's happening all over  there from people who either don't care or or don't know any better. As a musician who has made a living from performing and educating, I am all for protecting other's original works. 

[shelly0624]

I'm really glad to find this thread. I bought my Mz-2000 19 years ago. You can hardly find anything about them on YouTube. The Bradge is one (on this forum and on YouTube) and Kris Nicholson is the other one I know about. I've subscribed to both on YouTube. So glad to find this so I can get answers to any questions I might have. The MZ was ahead of it's time..

 

[Jokeyman123]

MZ-2000 alert. There is one on eBay right now-a little too expensive to add to my Casio collection-but looks in perfect condition. Tempting. Buyer is asking over 400 US dollars with shipping.

[Reag712]

Hi Everyone, I recently purchased a second hand MZ-2000 from a friend's mum. I was only 3 years old when this model originally came out  😄  so as you can imagine, this piece of kit is quite intimidating for me. I bought it to practice piano/keyboard, and for this function, it works very well. But I also intended to use it for music production work, and this is where the gap in technology inhibits me.

 

I use FL Studio 20 on IOS and have bought a midi to USB cable, however it doesn't seem to register the keyboard on my software. I was hoping, if anyone has overcome the same or a similar obstacle recently, I'd really appreciate some pointers. Is this even possible at all? 

 

I read some posts earlier in this thread about a USB floppy disc emulator or something, is this the way to go when trying to convert files?

 

Also just some general information and resources for this keyboard would be great if anyone has any. I'm a bit lost when handling technology which is practically as old as me 😄.

 

 

[Brad Saucier]

I use a MIDI to USB cable with mine and it works well, however I made sure to purchase a well known brand name cable.  If the cable does not have a brand name on it at all, it likely won't work well, if at all.  I've been down that road, and so have many others on this forum.

[Chas]

I'd like to share a recent MZ 2000 experience with you all!

 

My other half is a classically trained pianist and needed to record some audio Xmas pieces for a 20 minute medley to send to a church up north. My partner's weapon of choice is a lovely 1974 Kawai grand piano that resides in our formal living room. If they recorded it on their cellphone, could I edit the pieces together they asked me?

I gently reminded them that if they recorded it on a cellphone the sound quality would be rather poor. They they asked me if I could bring a computer and my audio interface down and use better microphones? I said that I could, but I'm more set up as an electronic musician and don't have much in the way of decent microphones. Plus there'd still be the issue of room acoustics and mic placement to content with. 

Here's a better idea, I suggested. Why not come up to my studio and use one of my keyboards straight into my DAW? That way we'd bypass all the mic'ing up issues and room acoustics and could pick and choose from multiple different pianos via VSTs. We started off using my CT-S300, because it was already set up for audio and USB MIDI recording. Unfortunately, as great a keyboard that the CT-S300 is, and despite having a velocity sensitive keyboard, it wasn't responsive enough for my partner who is more used to an acoustic piano keyboard. All wasn't lost with the CT-S300 though, as it was subsequently used for an Xmas themed electronic music project of my own where expressive playing was not needed

 

It looked like the project wasn't going to work, until I thought, what about using my MZ2000? Despite being 20 years old, it has a high end keyboard as it was aimed at the more professional user. They only dilemma was that it only has 5 pin DIN MIDI, and I didn't have 5 pin MIDI cables long enough for where it needed to be set up. However, it still had some very good piano patches, so why not try it and just record the audio line out only? We did just this, and straight away my partner found the keyboard MUCH better suited to their traditional piano/ acoustic style of playing. Very quickly the parts were recorded as the MZ2000's key bed was a joy to use (it got a big thumbs up!), and the MZ grand piano patch that we selected sounded great. After the parts were recorded, I edited them down to one continuous piece and added some reverb. It sounded fantastic, and when we sent it to the church up north they were very, very pleased. One because of my partner's playing, and two because of the sound quality.

After it was done, and with the MZ still set up, I thought I'd have a little play around on it, especially the synth section as that was one of the main reasons that I bought it. Damn, I forgot how good this silver behemoth sounded! I was having lots of fun with filter sweeps and messing around with the LFO. I also fired up some of the preset rhythms and drums and forgot how good those sounded too.

 

All in, it was a wonderful experience playing/ using/ recording my MZ2000 again. And as said, despite being 20 years old it is still an incredibly capable and great sounding keyboard with a high quality key bed.

 

I've included one of the audio tracks we recorded down below if you'd like to hear the MZ in action, and the pic shows it set up for the recording session. If you ever see an MZ2000 for sale at a good price, grab it! 


We Wish You a Merry Christmas 01.mp3


 

[Brad Saucier]

Excellent!  Recently, my MZ-2000 has developed some noise, noticable as a sound slowly trails off and the filter envelope is closing.  I had a light bulb moment listening to that noise.... the MZ must have analog filters if there is analog noise occuring.  Maybe some of my PCB components are failing.  So I decided the push the filter with a fast sweep and listen again.  If you try that with an XW synth, you hear stair stepping in the digital filter, but it's smooth as butter on the MZ.  That explains the old MZ magic!  Aha!  😊

[Jokeyman123]

I don't know Brad-sounds like your MZ-2000 is ready to completely fall apart. This noise trailing off usually indicates it's about to explode. You better sell it to me cheap before that happens. 

[Brad Saucier]

20 hours ago, Jokeyman123 said:

I don't know Brad-sounds like your MZ-2000 is ready to completely fall apart. This noise trailing off usually indicates it's about to explode. You better sell it to me cheap before that happens. 

 

Nice try.  A for effort.  🤪

[Resynthesizer]

There’s one for sale near me for 100. Think I’ll grab it. 

[Chas]

1 hour ago, Resynthesizer said:

There’s one for sale near me for 100. Think I’ll grab it. 

 

100 ($/ £/ €) is an absolute bargain for one of these in tidy and fully working condition. I would grab it as quickly as you can 👍

[joecandy]

Anyone had notes that wont stop(hanging)?

If im playing a chord with about 6 or 7 notes in, sometimes only 1 or 2 of the notes continue when i release my hands. Im not using a pedal.

Does the mz2000 have a polyphony limit?

The only way i can stop it is by turning off, although sometimes pressing the note sounding stops it. There is no panic/all notes off button. It even continues if i change the sound.

[Brad Saucier]

I haven't had that issue.  You can press the demo button as a panic button then quickly exit before a song plays.  Perhaps some of the key sensors are sticking.  

[CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler]

I have here the MZ-2000 service manual PDF. The sound engine seems to be built around 2 big SMD chips "UPD914GM-3ED", one acting as "DSP (Effect)", the other labelled "Sound Source ROM". The only filter I see in the block diagram sits between DAC output and volume pot to the amp, so I doubt that there is a VCA. There are adjustment procedures mentioned for aftertouch (has a trimmer) but none for VCA either. So I suspect it is purely digital, despite there was a time when "analogue" was demonized as something outdated that had to be overcome to manufacture state of art technology and so might get camouflaged.

 

But much like in MT-540, all audio processing and mixing seems to happen before the DAC and hence is digital.

 

"polyphony: 64 notes maximum (32 maximum for some tones)"

This looks sufficient to avoid hanging notes.

 

Quote

DIAGNOSTIC PROGRAM

To enter diagnostic mode
1. While pressing down "PATTERN SEQUENCER" and "MODE" buttons, press"POWER" button for
turning on.
2. The instrument is set in diagnostic mode and start LED check automatically.

...

 

To exit from the diagnostic program
Turn off power. When turning off power, hold down the "POWER" button for a short while.

 

The selftest contains plenty of keys, controls, midi and diskette drive tests, but nothing about filters.

 

The Casio MZ-2000 is claimed to contain real mask roms combined with several sram connected in various places to individual main ICs, which looks much safer than the modern flash memory disease that stores firmware and user data in the same overwriteable chip that can die of bitrot at any time when a tiny power surge or removal of supply voltage makes wear levelling go wrong or has none anyway to make the chip wear out by planned obsolescence once warranty has ended.

 

But there are 2x 4M-bit static ram backed up by a lithium battery. Once it drains, this may cause strange things when e.g. stored synth parameters go nuts.

 

E.g. my Yamaha MK-100 stores all settings in battery backed up RAM; with no batteries inserted the RAM is still backed up by a large electrolytic capacitor for a few days(?). When the cap runs empty, this messes up the data badly and even causes things to subtly malfunction those normally were expected not to be RAM dependant. E.g. sometimes particular preset sounds plays too silent or certain parts of them refuse to be editable, or their LEDs show mess or sustain doesn't work or even the chord volume slide switch refuses to change volume at some positions (e.g. only 2 of the 5 positions have different volume). These flaws can drive you crazy and make you take the entire thing apart for hours to successlessly search for dirty switches etc. etc. and even in the manual I downloaded from Yamaha there is no reset procedure for this keyboard explained to prevent this. To fix this, I finally installed a reset button switch to clear memory.

Edited January 12, 2022 by CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler

[ShellyA.]

Has anyone tried to use the microphone feature on their MZ-2000 for voice? It doesn't seem to have much volume when I use it and I have to practically eat the microphone to get any sound. I'm using a Shure SM58 mic. The speakers on the MZ are strong enough, I would think, for more volume than that.

[ShellyA.]

I'm not sure why I'm showing up as ShellyA. I'm shelly0624 (up further..). I haven't been here for a while, but I've been playing my MZ quite a bit lately and remembered this thread.

[Jokeyman123]

There were (are) "low impedance" and "high impedance" versions of the Shure SM58-at least there used to be. The low impedance was designed for professional PA systems for vocals live, the high impedance can be used that way too, but the signal from the low impedance version is not as "hot' as the high impedance, which is what the Casio is designed to interface with, it is looking for a "high impedance" signal. Years back, most of the "consumer" grade hobbyist mics such as you could buy at many electronics stores were designed as high impedance for use with tape recorders and other "consumer" devices. I suspect your Vocalmaster Shure SM58 is the low impedance model. if you had the original datasheet, it specified which it was. Oddly enough these cheaper high impedance mikes don't seem very common anymore, as the Chinese are flooding the market with cheap "USB" mikes, which i suspect are in reality high impedance, not true condenser mikes as these need no phantom 48v power. but I have never tried these with any audio input Casio or other. With the right adapter one of these might work, or if you can find one with a 1/8 or 1/4 inch plug.

[CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler]

Cheapo mikes are almost always electret (containing a permanent electrostatic crystal), which needs no high phantom voltage but only few volts (through a resistor) to drive the internal transistor or amp chip. Such microphones often even come with 5€ soundtoys or built into all kind of cheap recording devices. Due to internal amplification they output a fairly high signal level.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electret_microphone

 

Dynamic microphones are physically bigger and often more expensive (but can have better bass response), thus inside laptops, small cameras etc. normally only electret mics are used. Also those "USB" mics (in headsets, desktop accessories etc.) are normally electret. AFAIK modern devices like smartspeakers (Alexa) even contain an array of a dozen of those tiny mics to cancel ambient noises and focus the listening direction to the talking user.

 

Before there was electret, cheapo mics often were piezo (dielectric crystal attached to aluminium foil diagphragm), those tended to sound hissy but also had high signal level. Nowadays they are mostly used as contact mics (e.g. pickups for nylon guitar strings or burglar alarms), those are the same component like the very flat piezo speakers inside 1980th LCD games etc.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_microphone

Edited February 5, 2022 by CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler

[bimfood]

Yeehaa! I got a MZ-2000 Keyboard yesterday. The next days I will explore it. First impression: Seems to bee a nice machine. 😎

[bimfood]

Okay. I played with this thing 2 to 3 hours. It´s a funny board.

 

I had the MZ-X 500 a few years ago and sold it (1) because of the keybed and (2) because of its cerebral interface.

 

The layout of the MZ-2000 is very nice. The hardware knobs are at that place, where you are / I am looking for them. The menus on the screen are well orderd and the graphic design leads you perfectly through the complex structure. (Much better than in the MZ-X 500!!). Last thing: The interaction / connection between hardware buttons and screen functions is supirior. Orientation is easy.

 

The proportion of hardware elements fit in human scale. Much better than the MZ-X 500! Everything has the space which is needed. Nothing is squasched or squeezed, like the sliders and wheels at the MZ-X. The keybed of the MZ 2000 feels a little bit plastic-like, but in an okay way. AND THE AFTERTOUCH gives you a big option for dynamic playing.

 

I just played around a little bit. I am looking forward to use the synthesizer functions. I like the sound. It has a little bit 90´s style muffled/ dull sound. First experiments with the internal DSP Effects are promising. It´s a little dissapointing, that only 2 of the 4 DSPs can be used for the so called 'melody part' upper 1+2 and lower 1+2. Also the effect sound quality is clearly 25 years back...

 

It would be unimaginable if the MZ-2000 with its wonderful operating concept had the engine of the MZ-X 500 under the hood ... the MZ-X certainly wouldn't have flopped

Edited January 2 by bimfood

[bimfood]

Hi togehter,

 

I´m trying to store some regestrations in the MZ-2000. At first everythings looks okay. Until I get to the effect section. The effect typ of DSP, Reverb, Chorus and Master is stored in the Regestration. The DSP-fx has four parameters in the fx-setting menu, third and fours parameter set the value from DSP to System Reverb and Chorus. I can tweak these ones, but the value ist not stored within the Registration. If I recall the Registration, the send values are the predefined standard values of the DSP-effect. Does anyone know how that works?

 

I tried the "Tone DSP Hold" ON and OFF to avoid that the DSP settings will be overwritten bei the sounds own DSP settings. This had no effect.

 

In the Mixer screen on page 2, the Send-to-Effect values can be set. If I turn on the DSP for Upper 1 or Upper 2, it seems, that the direct send to System Reverb and Chorus will be ignored. In other words: It seems, that the DSP is not a parallel signal chain, but it is connected in series. Is that true?

Edited January 4 by bimfood

[Brad Saucier]

I haven't used my MZ-2000 in a while, so memory is foggy.  Tone DSP hold freezes DSP from changing when different tones are selected, since tones store the DSP settings.  I'll have to look one day and refresh my memory on everything else.