AlenK

If that's the way the sliders actually work on the MZ-X500 then something is wrong. I don't have an MZ-X500 but I can describe how the sliders work on an XW-P1, which also has a Hex Layer mode (although not nearly as flexible!). When you select a Hex Layer tone on the XW-P1 you hear all the layers at whatever relative volume levels are programmed for them in the tone. If you then move a slider the relative volume of the corresponding layer will instantly change to match the current position of the slider. I would be very surprised if the sliders on the MZ-X500 work differently.

If you use Soft instead of Hold1 the notes won't sustain when you use the pedal. Of course maybe you _want_ the notes to sustain as well. You can compensate for the small drop in volume caused by Soft (if it matters.. it's not much of a volume change) using another virtual controller. Ain't them virtual controllers wonderful?

Well, it may well be a discontinuity in the amp LFO implementation. I don't think it's a loop in the sample itself because that same wave doesn't show any such clicks when played in a Hex Layer tone. As I said it doesn't have any tremolo at all there. Funny thing is, there is no amp LFO available to _users_ for PCM melody tones. But evidently something is possible. Whatever the engineers did it doesn't work very well. Evidently no one at Casio checked that tone before releasing the XW synths. Or they heard the artifact and just didn't care. It's pretty obvious!

I need some confirmation of what I'm hearing in the preset PCM-melody tone GM Trem.Str. (P3-0 in the PCM Strings/Brass category on the XW-P1 and P178 on the XW-G1). It is intended to reproduce a tremolo articulation by a string section. This particular tone is required for General MIDI compatibility (hence GM in the tone name!). There isn't a non-GM version. I am hearing a kind of clicking artifact near (but not at) the beginning of the note. It's there 9 times out of 10. Notably, if you call up the underlying wave GM Trem.Str. (193) in a Hex Layer tone on the XW-P1 you don't get the clicking. But you also don't get the tremolo effect! Evidently, Casio is doing something extra with this particular PCM-melody tone to achieve the tremolo (no, it's not going through the DSP) and it causes an artifact, at least on my XW-P1. If you hear this clicking too please let me know.

Minor editing of existing rhythms only. Mute parts. Switch instruments. That sort of thing.

It's a directory, not a file. Put your USB stick in a PC or Mac. Navigate to it in the file browser (usually Windows Explorer on a PC). Create a directory at its root level called MUSICDAT (Casio says to use all capitals). You are done.

Duophonic Emulation View File Here is a simple patch to illustrate emulation of duophonic operation using the normally monophonic Solo Synth. It is able to play two pitches at once from the keyboard. If you press one key both Syn1 and Syn2 play the key's pitch, as expected. If you press two keys the first one that is detected will play Syn1 and the second one will play Syn2. If you press additional keys Syn2 will play the pitch of the last key pressed while the pitch of Syn1 will not change. While the tones used in this example are very simple there is no reason they could not be more complex with different waveforms, envelopes, filtering, etc. This tone was created on a XW-P1 but there is no reason it should not also work on the XW-G1. Submitter AlenK Submitted 03/27/2017 Category XW-Synths  

Greetings XW enthusiasts, I’m posting this in the XW-P1 part of the forum even though I believe it will apply equally well to XW-G1 because I think more people will read it here given the far greater number of P1s out there. If you happen to be fortunate enough to own one of Korg’s recreations of the famous ARP Odyssey, or own an original ARP version, you are well aware that it is actually a “duophonic” synthesizer. That is, it is capable of playing two pitches at one time. When two keys on its keyboard are pressed, one of the Odyssey’s two oscillators plays the pitch corresponding to one key while the other oscillator plays the pitch for the other key. “Duophonic” is in quotes because the Odyssey isn’t actually playing two individually articulated notes; both oscillators pass through the same filter and amplifier. I have recently discovered for myself a way to emulate this behavior in the XW’s solo synth. I say “for myself” because I may not be the first to have discovered it. And it may well have been described here already. However, I am aware of only one other post on the matter of duophonic operation. Here’s the method: Program oscillator Syn1 with a KeyFollow value of zero (00) rather than the normal +64 and a KeyFolBase value of C- instead of the standard C4. Program a virtual controller with NoteOnKeyNum as the source, a depth of 127 and KeyFolBase of Syn1 as the destination. Choose whatever wave and envelopes for Syn1 you desire. If you want a simple duophonic sound, program Syn2 with the same wave and envelopes but leave its KeyFollow and KeyFolBase parameters at their default settings. Of course, you needn't use the same wave or envelopes. When you play a key the pitch of Syn1 will correspond to NoteOnKeyNum, which is simply the MIDI note number. The pitch of Syn2 will be identical. When you now play a second note without releasing the first note the pitch of Syn1 will continue to correspond to NoteOnKeyNum. The pitch of Syn2, however, will correspond to the actual pitch of the second key you pressed. This works because, in the case of the synth oscillators (Syn1 and Syn2) the NoteOnKeyNum value they receive appears to always be that of the first key pressed. Hence, pressing a second key does not change the value that Syn1 receives through the virtual controller whereas Syn2 responds normally. (PS. The PCM oscillators don't respond to NoteOnKeyNum in the same way, as it turns out. I initially had hopes of assigning two oscillators to each of the pitches but so far I haven't found a way to do it.) The legato parameters of each of the two oscillators greatly affect how their individual envelopes respond to key presses in this “mode” of operation. There are four possible combinations and each yields a different result; which of them is “right” for a given piece of music will depend on the music. This technique has one major limitation. Since the pitch of oscillator Syn1 depends entirely on the NoteOnKeyNum value passed through a virtual controller, portamento is not supported for it. Turning it on has no effect whatsoever. You can, however, freely apply portamento to oscillator Syn2, which is an interesting effect in its own right. I have uploaded an example. Yes, it really does work.

1) Not from scratch but you can edit the instruments in the preset rhythms, take out parts, etc. 2) I don't believe individual tracks can be exported directly. You can save as SMF, of course (type 0 or 1) and you could I believe disable tracks before you save but there would be little point versus using type 1. And AFAIK the 560 won't import individual tracks back into the sequencer. You can import an SMF file but it becomes a new sequence. I don't see a way to copy tracks from one sequence to another but maybe I just missed it. The 560's MIDI recorder is really a scratchpad sequencer. It doesn't even have overdub. 3) No. 4) No. 5) Not sure exactly what you are asking but the USB can't send or receive digital audio and there is no way to get any component of the sounds out of the machine. There's no real DAW integration. AFAIK there isn't even an INS file for the 560. As for the follow up question I'm not aware of any iPad apps specifically for the 560 but you could theoretically whip something up in, say, MIDI Designer. Since Casio hasn't released a MIDI implementation document yet for the 560 there would be a bit of guessing based on what has _not_ changed between the PX-5S and MZ-X500 MIDI implementation documents (there are many similarities between the two).

Sorry, I have not done those and I don't have a MZ-X500. I have a PX-560 and an XW-P1. As evidenced by a video I posted about the sax sound (I didn't make the video) the MZ-X500 can do a lot of things not possible on the PX-560 or on the XW-P1. (But by the same token the XW-P1 can do things not possible on either of the others.)

Yes. Adjust the pedal first as per Mark's instructions (follow the pictures) then do the calibration procedure as per the User's Guide. As per Fearless's comment, set the pedal to control Volume, not Expression. That's in the User's Guide, too.

I recently upgraded from X-stands to a nice QuickLok Z-stand. Clearly, I have it all wrong. ;->

I did not misunderstand. I was addressing the original question: "What can be done so that the files have the correct date/time stamp?" Your answer was a workaround using the file modification date. I was not replying to that. Even after you posted your workaround he said So I presumed your workaround was not good enough. Hey, it's a tough room.

I don't think Windows has a built-in way to modify the date/time stamp of a file. But there are apparently freeware utilities that can do it. As for real-time clocks (RTCs) in keyboards (which is what you need for date/time stamping of files) they do indeed seem to be rare. But it is not primarily because of cost (implied by mentioning the Kronos, which has one mainly because it is literally based on computer hardware). RTCs are very inexpensive to implement, even as a discrete chip (I have designed with several). Rather, there hasn't really been a compelling reason to have one in a keyboard. There still isn't, IMO, the OP's wishes notwithstanding.

This is a good thread with access to a lot of other threads and tutorials: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-electronic-music-production/894589-reverse-engineering-lucky-man.html Frankly, I suspect your biggest problem with getting a really accurate emulation may be the simple fact that the 560 doesn't have a monophonic mode, unlike the XW-P1 and the MZ-X500. It's always polyphonic. At the very least it will mean you will have to be very careful with your phrasing to avoid overlapping any notes.

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).

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. .

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.

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.

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!

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.

Some good tips in this article from Keyboard magazine, January 2013: http://www.emusician.com/how-to/1334/master-class-synth-secrets-of-the-pros/45277