mrmr9494

Thanks for your perspective Ian, very similar situation and interesting you've also decided on the Windows 10+ limitation. BTW, that's a really nice looking program you have written for the CZ synths. It's nice to find out about other things going on in the amateur space.

This is useful feedback. I haven't been able to specifically test on a Windows 7 machine, so interesting (if a little disappointing) to hear it doesn't work there. So yes, for now it is only for Windows 10/11 64-bit. There is also an option to run from python, but that will be most suitable for people who have used Python before in the past. This is the long story: the executables are built using a system called PyInstaller, and from reading online it's starting to seem that it needs to build a different file for each version of Windows. The build itself is done with Github Actions which is free (nice!) but is limited to only Windows 10. So I'm not sure what solution there is for this at the moment. Finally, for those who are able to run the program, I've made a small update to a new version. It fixes some appearance issues with the Hint window: https://github.com/michgz/tonetyrant/releases/download/v1.0.1/windows-10-executable-v1.0.1.zip

That would be the "WK-" family of keyboards? No, it won't be useful with those keyboards, for that I think there are existing tools from Casio - either IDES 2.0 or IDES 3.0, depending on the model.

I've created a piece of open-source software for editing Tone files for certain models of Casio keyboard. It's called "Tone Tyrant for Casio", and the home page for the project is here: https://github.com/michgz/tonetyrant. This is something I've done as a hobby and hopefully it can be helpful to some other Casio musicians. At the moment the software only supports CT-X3000/X5000 keyboards. However, there's a plan to add additional functionality which has the potential to make it useful for other keyboards (starting with CT-X700/X800). See below for a bit more info on that. The software is based on a "hex editor" concept so if you've used other hex editors it should be very straightforward to get started. There are some features additional to what you normally get on a hex editor which make it useful for editing Casio tones: Automatically calculates the Casio CRC value Provides "hints" for tone parameters which have a known meaning. These have just been worked out by me, so there are loads which are still unknown. If you work out others which I've missed, you can help out by feeding them back into the project -- either by making a post on this forum, or by creating an "Issue" on the Github page. A feature to create random tones (useful to get creative inspiration!) Can upload & download tones directly to keyboard User Memory -- no need to use a USB stick or CTX Data Manager program. Windows To get Tone Tyrant running on Windows, there's no need to install anything. Just download the latest version, unzip it anywhere and double-click to run (Update: for now, the program is only for Windows 10/11). The first time you run, Windows may pop up a security dialog - click "More Info" and "Run anyway". The latest version is v1.0.1: https://github.com/michgz/tonetyrant/releases/download/v1.0.1/windows-10-executable-v1.0.1.zip Other systems For info on running with other systems (Linux / running within a Python prompt / etc.) see the project page. At the moment, Mac OS is not supported but it shouldn't be hard to get it working -- if that would be useful to you, then give a shout. Planned features Now, for the possible upcoming feature: I'm hoping to do some work with Miguel, the programmer behind the RBK Mixer tool (which you should definitely check out if you have a CT-X700/X800/CDP-S350 and wish to get a bit more control over its sounds), to get real-time upload of tone parameters. This would allow changing tones over MIDI while they are being played, no need to upload a new file for every change that's made. One of the cool things about that is it doesn't make any use of User Memory storage, so it should work perfectly well on keyboards that don't have non-volatile storage for tones. That means in future the software can usefully support any of the following keyboard models: CT-X700/X800 CDP-S350 Indian variants of CT-X CT-S400 In fact, probably any future keyboards that use AiX sound engine Getting all of these will be quite ambitious! If you own one of the keyboards listed above and would like have tone-editing capabilities for it, then do get in touch. The more people who can get involved (and give a little bit of help, in terms of testing & trying things out), the more support we can create across the Casio keyboard range. EDIT 25/01/2022: update to v1.0.1

Not at all, I use loads of SysEx commands. It would be hugely difficult to make any progress otherwise. A lot of commands are quite similar to MZX500 - the parameter numbers are different, so it's a matter of working out what CT-X number corresponds to the MZX500 number and then the MZX500 MIDI documentation becomes a big help. Does the "ctrlr" software know about CT-X? Or any other Casio keyboards, such as MZ-X500? If not, then I guess you're building up the SysEx by hand? As for whether Casios that can't be edited can still be controlled, I think probably yes. The CTX3000 has three "memory areas" for tones -- Built-In, User, and Current Selection (or, in computer terms, "ROM", "EEPROM" and "RAM"). The Current Selection ("RAM") accepts SysEx in real time, and has 48 slots for everything from Keyboard, Rhythm to MIDI channel tones. Almost certainly it will work the same on CT-X700 with a few small changes. I got Chandler Holloway to do a quick experiment to try it on his CT-X700. It didn't work, but it's probably just different numbering or something.

The instrument has five built-in church organs: 092 PIPE ORGAN 1 093 PIPE ORGAN 2 094 PIPE ORGAN 3 095 CHAPEL ORGAN 580 GM PIPE ORGAN (similar to PIPE ORGAN 3?) If you don't like any of those, may I recommend the GOTHIC ORGAN is available for download from the downloads section of this site: new-sounds. It's a more "simple" organ sound than the five above, and these days I use it more than the built-in ones.

Well I can use Python okay, but I'm quite useless at creating useable software applications. It's a different skill, and one I don't have.. But that said, I'd like to be involved in a CT-X oriented sound editor project. I've found creating sounds on the CT-X to be a little unsatisfying so far (for the reasons that Executor said above), but there might be a "chicken-and-egg" thing going on -- because tools don't exist for the CT-X, more people haven't been able to experiment and find interesting things to do with the instrument that would make the tools worth creating. I'm waiting to see what new hardware Casio releases in the new year; if its synthesis is anything like CT-X then yes, it might very well be worthwhile somebody (you?? ) spearheading a project in that direction. (Guess I've thrown you under the bus there )

If you check out the "digeridoo" sound in the download new-sounds that has a filter LFO applied to it (I thought that matched the "who-who" sound that digeridoo players make with their mouths). For filter envelope, I'll look around to see what I can find. EDIT: here's a couple of crazy tones showing off filter & amplitude envelopes. 1. Sweeps the filter on attack. 2. Almost no attack, and a big crescendo on release. Noise_with_Filter_Sweep.TONCrescendo_on_Release.TON

Yes, the LFOs and envelopes can be changed quite effectively on most of the tones. I'm currently experimenting to try to find out more about what the parameters do, and generally more about synthesis on the CT-X (been a bit distracted by other things over the last few months, but it's an ongoing project for me..) Ultimately the CT-X is never going to be a very good synthesiser, because the sample waveforms are read-only and so are most of the other internal data structures. I'm really only interested for fun/personal interest. There was a rumour this week that Casio will soon release a keyboard using the same AiX engine as CT-X but focussed more on "electronic instruments", so interesting to see if that one will open up synthesis parameters to the user a bit more.

Absolutely that's possible. See the manual p77. section 4 "Specify the number of measures ... of the accompaniment pattern you want to create." You can specify a different number for V1 and V2.

Executor, the info is here. It's bits 4 (monophonic) and 6-7 (portamento) of the byte at offset 01BAh in the file (in the link it says offset 019Ah, but that's because it's not counting the 20h-byte header at the start of the file). It's a little bit not simple because there's a CRC-32 in the header you might need to re-calculate. Try using "CTX Data Manager" program from Casio -- I can't remember (maybe others know?) if that requires the CRC-32. Otherwise, the algorithm for calculating in Python is here, or it's a CRC-32 of data at file offsets 0020h-01E7h inserted at position 0018h-001Bh. What hex editor do you use? Someone might have experience doing CRC-32 in it.

I'd definitely like to try out the new program and see what you've done with it. My setup doesn't quite match the target so not sure if I can really count as a "beta tester". Will give it a go though. My setup: 1. CT-X3000 2. Linux (any idea if this is possible? Don't make any changes for Linux, I'll fiddle around to see if it's possible to get it running) 3. Data Manager (-ish... equivalent software).

Really nice, I haven't seen that site before and it's got loads of nice rhythms. Is it an official Casio reseller?

@ChandlerHolloway , here's v1.3 of the Python including a function isMonoCompatible() which returns a value True if all 3 patches are compatible with mono panning (i.e. all of them don't appear on your list). I know you suggested a warning be raised, but I'm not sure if a Python warning could interact badly with the Flask framework -- it could easily result in a crash. So I think for now it's best if the warning is raised within Flask rather than within the Python, based on the return value of that function. I've also made a couple of small changes as suggested earlier by casio_style. As for what is causing the problems with mono panning, it's still quite a mystery. Here are a few observations I've made on the CT-X3000: - It's often different between left & right. GM ORGAN 3 can pan full left (or nearly full left), but full right isn't possible. - Many are related to chorus. For example, ACCORDION FRENCH 2 when I set Chorus Send to 0 the problem goes away (same with the SYNTH BASS patches). You say that chorus effects are mono-compatible on the CT-X700 but that certainly isn't the case on CT-X3000. - An interesting one is SAX SECTION 1. There the panning changes abruptly between neighbouring notes on the keyboard. Casio has definitely made a mistake here in the sound design, which raises a question: are all the examples you've found mistakes?

Thanks, that diagram clears it up a lot. The work-around is easy enough, it's just I didn't know it was needed. Useful!

Chandler, that's a really comprehensive guide and it's great to have it all compiled in one place. The user interface on these instruments is quite convoluted at first, so a guide like this really helps to get through the first few times until it becomes clear. It does become easier! Can you explain the background for why Track 1 disappears when there is content in Tracks 2-6? (I know you said you wouldn't get into it, but I'm not letting you off that easily .). I don't use song recorder much so that limitation was news to me, it actually is the same on CT-X3000: if there's content in any of the 16 "Song Solo" tracks (which I guess correspond to tracks 2-6 on CT-X700?) then the content in the 9 "Song System" tracks (equivalent to track 1?) doesn't appear in the exported SMF. What is the reason behind that?

After writing the above, I played around some more and actually it can be a lot simpler. It turns out with a tone that's been edited to be "Legato", the PORTAMENTO button on the keyboard changes the portament speed between what's specified in the tone and what is selected by the user. So : have attached a .TON file with speed set to zero, which behaves quite nicely: PORTAMENTO button Off -> non-legato, exactly like normal "222 STEREO STRINGS" PORTAMENTO button On -> Legato sound, with speed as selected by the user in menu FUNCTION > Cntrller > Portamnt. SSTRLEG0.TON

What Casio calls "Legato" is a mode of portamento that's supported on some of their other keyboards. Is that what you're asking about, r_1159? By coincidence I was looking into this same topic just last week. The mode is definitely supported by AiX, and the MIDI implementation document page 13 explains how to get it working over MIDI. To use on keyboard tones it's necessary to use a binary editor and edit some undocumented portions of the .TON file. I've attached tone "222 STEREO STRINGS" edited in that way - r_1159 let me know if this works or if you need something else here (for example, it can be made faster/slower if you prefer). None of the Preset tones on CT-X use this mode of portamento, so a binary editor is really the only way. If you need to turn the effect on/off during a performance probably the only way to do that is with registrations - assign the normal "222 STEREO STRINGS" to a first slot, and the legato version below to a second slot. It seems the PORTAMENTO button on the instrument can't be made to control this variant mode of portamento, it can only control the "normal" portamento. EDIT: Removed the file (see below)

@Chandler Holloway, yeah turns out I changed the wrong bit of the header 😑. Please try again with the new file. For those wishing to do this with a hex editor, the bit that needs to change (at the very beginning of the file) is: 00000000 43 54 2d 58 37 30 30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |CT-X700.........| 00000010 4d 52 46 48 00 00 00 00 63 69 f0 b1 5e 03 00 00 |MRFH....ci..^...| : should change to: 00000000 43 54 2d 58 37 30 30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |CT-X700.........| 00000010 4d 52 46 48 01 00 00 00 63 69 f0 b1 5e 03 00 00 |MRFH....ci..^...| : NEW_CT-X700_saved_as_CDP-S350.MRF

It's definitely possible that somebody in the user community could create a MRF-to-MIDI converter. I did a Phrase-to-MIDI converter script here that "sort-of" works (proof of concept) -- and the CPFF format that Casio uses for Phrase Pads is very similar to MRF so we're half-way there (maybe). I find the Phrase Pads are the easiest way to record rhythm patterns on the CT-X3000, so that was the reason for wanting to convert Phrases - after that I could then convert the MIDI to AC7 rhythms. @Chandler Holloway, try the attached file in your CDP-S350. It just has the header changed as you suggested. It might not work of course, but if it does it's an easy change to do (can be done in a Hex editor). CT-X700_saved_as_CDP-S350.MRF

@casio_style A hex editor on its own could be not enough because there's a CRC32 checksum that needs to be calculated. A hex editor followed by an additional software tool to "patch in" the correct CRC32 value would work. Such a tool doesn't currently exist, although some hex editor have a built-in CRC32 calculator and it could then be done manually.

@casio_style, those are interesting ideas for how to use registrations. I've turned your suggestions into an "issue" (link here) in the Python library and incorporate them at some later stage. They won't be part of Chandler's program though. How are you with using Python?🙂 BTW, registrations can change the instrument selection on part 5 but not octave shift for that part (octave shift is only on parts 1..4). Probably on the CT-X part 5 follows the octave of whatever part it's harmonising.

@Chandler Holloway, that's really great news. Really looking forward to seeing how its' turned out. @casio_style yes the part 5 instrument is included in registration. It seems it's always just the same as UPPER KEYBOARD. What was the effect of changing it on the CTK keyboards? I don't use auto harmony a lot so not so sure of the implications of having it different from the main tone.