AlenK

Yeah, I wouldn't buy an iPad just to run that app, especially if I had a G1 as you do. I happened to already have an iPad (it was a gift) but it's my only fruity product. I am actually pretty anti-Apple for a number of reasons but I have to admit the iPad has been useful for other stuff. But for editing my XW-P1; not so much. I am no fan of adjusting parameters by sliding a finger up and down on a glass surface or tapping some virtual + and - buttons on said glass surface. I find that the data wheel works pretty well for dialing in parameter values. Using nine sliders like you can on the G1 would be even better. With regard to an XW successor, IMHO it should have at least six pots or rotary encoders, preferably eight, in addition to the nine sliders. All of them assignable and all used when programming synth voices, with the assignments and values visible on the built-in touchscreen.

My apologies: I spoke too generally. I intended only to specifically reference the ability of MIDI Designer XW to synchronize with solo synth data already in the XW, which was the OP's question. It cannot and does not. Yes, it responds to the MIDI information coming from the knobs and the sliders. But that's all. If you go into the menus of the XW and tweak a value that is not controlled by the knobs or sliders (and there are of course hundreds of such parameters) the XW does not transmit that information to the iPad, nor does the XW Designer app try to read that information from the XW. Aside from responding to data from the knobs and sliders (which is trivially easy to do) it is one-way data transfer. That's what I actually meant in my too-brief and unwisely worded reply. For the same reason, you cannot take a solo synth tone already in the XW and load it into the iPad. This is a basic limitation of the app. It also doesn't edit the virtual controllers. The reason for all of these limitations is that it is "merely" transmitting NRPN information to the XW to achieve the editing. Have a good look at the XW-P1/XW-G1 MIDI Implementation document. You'll note that the virtual controllers are missing in the big tables of solo synth NRPNs. The app would need to output system exclusive (Sys Ex) data to handle those. It would also need to use Sys Ex data to read solo synth parameters from the XW. Unfortunately, it does not. I am typing this right now on an iPad and I have used the app with my XW-P1. I like it and I applaud Mike for putting all the hard work into it. But frankly I am now faster editing the solo synth from the XW-P1's own menus and buttons. After you do it for a while it becomes second nature. If I had the XW-G1 with its ability to modify many of the solo synth parameters using the sliders, I would likely be even faster. And, of course, you can't edit anything else with the app. The PC/Mac app edits more stuff but doesn't do sequences, arps or phrases. The XW's own interface, as graphically unsophisticated as it is, does everything. (Well, you can't actually edit phrases apart from re-recording or overdubbing, but you can only do those functions from the XW's own interface.) An XW successor, whenever that happens (the MZ-X is not that), will undoubtedly have Casio's 5.3-inch (or is it 5.2-inch?) touchscreen integrated into the product. That's when we will see true touchscreen integration and editing of everything from it. I'm looking forward to it as long as we don't give up any hardware controls in the process. I want MORE of those, not less.

Let the discussion begin.

So here's the first correction. Better hearing it for me than someone else, I guess. On page 63 I wrote about using the solo synth's filter to process PCM tones from another zone (or zones): "If you play the keyboard at this point you will hear whatever solo synth tone you selected for zone 1 and the PCM melody tone for zone 2 as both pass through the Total Filter. However, we generally don’t want to hear the solo synth’s oscillators in this case. So we must program and use a new solo synth tone in which all of the oscillators are disabled. (We could alternately program their volumes to zero but since they would then remain active we would be needlessly reducing somewhat the available polyphony of the XW-P1.)" The last two sentences are actually wrong. If you disable all the oscillators in the solo synth, for some reason the Total Filter envelope does not seem to trigger correctly (it will trigger sometimes but not reliably - don't really know what's going on). So you have to keep at least one oscillator on and turn its volume down to zero if you don't want to hear it in your tone.

In a post somewhere in the forums Mike Martin said XW Designer does not (cannot) read from the XW synth. It is one-way data transfer only, from the iPad to the XW.

You said phrase. Does that mean you are using the phrase sequencer? If so, it will start recording when it sees input from the footswitch, the mod wheel, the pitchbend wheel or the knobs, not just when it sees the first note. You could depress and quickly release the footswitch, or move a knob a tiny bit, in sync with the start of the rest and then record your first note after the rest.

Hi Everyone, I dropped out of these forums a while back. I had simply realized I was spending WAY too much time here and felt I had to quit it cold turkey. I'm popping in now on this the first day of the new year to make what I hope is a significant contribution for XW-P1 enthusiasts. It's a small document called The XW-P1 Companion: A Guide to the Synthesis Capabilities of Casio's XW-P1 Performance Synthesizer. Consider it my late Christmas present to forum members. Many here have complained about the XW-P1 User's Guide. It does its job but that is all. Hopefully, The XW-P1 Companion will fill in some of the blanks you might have in your understanding of the instrument. Note that as its subtitle says it concentrates on the XW-P1's synthesis capabilities. It doesn't say much about other aspects of the XW-P1 such as its step sequencer, phrase sequencer, arpeggiator or the mixer, except as resources for synthesizing sounds. If I had tried to include all of that I would never have finished the document. Even so it's appearing nearly four years after the XW-P1 was introduced. Why so late? I did it in my spare time, which has been exceptionally rare. Next time I'll try to work faster. The XW-P1 Companion is an independent effort done without the explicit involvement of Casio. Hence, any and all errors are my own. If you see any let me know (there are ALWAYS more errors!). You can PM them to me or reply to this post. However, if you feel you have found a factual error please include a way that I can reproduce or validate the correct operation. If you just say "you're wrong about X" without a specific example that illustrates exactly how, I'm unlikely to follow it up since I just don't have the time to experiment. Note: The document has been updated. That revision can be downloaded from the thread "The XW-P1 Companion - Rev 4".

You'll have to spell out exactly how the manual describes that. I must be too dumb to figure it out. On second thought don't bother. I'm done here.

Oops, sorry about that, Brett. Didn't mean to minimize your contribution. But by your question that started the thread it didn't sound like you had discovered this functionality before Ted posted his reply. Post number 6 didn't really clear that up (for me). As for the way this new "feature" works, now that I managed to replicate what Ted described so completely (you have to applaud him for doing all that) I do believe I understand what is going on. It didn't work for me the first few times I tried it, proving that it is a little bit flakey. So it could well be an experimental or untested feature as I said and that would further explain why the manual says practically nothing about it (I would say it actually doesn't say anything about it - that line on page E-29 proves nothing). But hey, what do I know about how synthesizers, electronics, and embedded processors actually work or how products of this complexity and general nature are designed? I have only been studying this stuff for over thirty years and designed similarly complex electronics most of my professional life. Personally, I don't believe you will be able to do what you're hoping to do and will have to live with this undocumented feature as is. But if you discover any further functionality of the sliders please let us know.

I agree with Chas. There's no compelling reason for Casio to venture down the currently trendy analog path. And they have no substantial history with analog so it's doubtful they would do a good job of it (although as already pointed out they have used analog processing before in a few products). Moog of course does have a rich analog history. That's their TOTAL history. Korg is another company with a rich analog past but they are evidently stuck there for the most part when it comes to using analog technology, releasing for example clones of the MS-20 and, I hear tell, planning to clone the ARP Odyssey. That's what happens when a lack of imagination is combined with corporate greed (to capitalize on that hot analog market all the "boutique" vendors are servicing). IMO there is real gold in Casio's CZ past. It's what put the company's name on the pro keyboard map back in the 80's and people respected them for it. If they were to include a modern Phase Distortion engine with all of today's modulation possibilities, more oscillators and more polyphony in a new keyboard that also included all the other stuff we've already got from them (virtual-analog solo synth, Hex Layers, drawbar organ, decent PCM sounds) they could have a winner. And I say this as someone who grew up listening to and loving pure analog synths and who has never owned a CZ synthesizer. PS. Frankly, Casio's virtual-analog solo synth engine only needs some tweaks to be "good enough" for all but diehard analog snobs. Fix the broken PWM, reduce the aliasing, add a 12db/octave (2-pole) low-pass filter option and perhaps add a smoother option for the 24dB/octave (4-pole) filter the XW uses now (it get can pretty nasty at high resonance, which is good for some types of sounds and not so good for others). The PX-5S proves they have learned how to do better, smoother filters (although in that case they are only 12db/octave). Oh, and add a few more knobs to the synth's panel along with reasonably complete editing access to the underlying engines using those knobs and the sliders, along the lines of what the G1 allows for editing the solo synth but for all the synth engines under the hood. Okay, not such an easy job anymore but that's what engineers are for!

Sure, I give Brett props for asking the question. But it was you who found the answer. Wear the crown with pride. ... Luck!

What opens so many possibilities is the phrase "last five keys". Assuming you meant "lowest" and not "highest" this sounds similar, but not exactly the same as what happens when you activate "KEYSHIFT" by pressing its button and lighting up its LED: you don't hear the tone you are playing on the lowest octave of the keyboard since that octave is now reserved for shifting the key (all the pitches) of any step-sequencer pattern that may be playing or you may activate. But that is more than five keys.

There is only one filter (VCF) in the EMS VCS 3. My suggestion to modulate the XW's filter with cascaded (multiplied) LFOs was an attempt to replicate, using only the solo-synth resources available to us, the gated (pulsed) sound that is actually more idiomatic of the intro than the slower filter sweep. If the solo-synth architecture in the XW used a virtual VCA after the virtual VCF, as most analog and virtual-analog synths do, the pulsing would be a piece of cake - just route the faster square-wave LFO to modulate the VCA. But that's not how the XW does it so we have to get creative or find another way entirely. Recreating the pulsing (gating) is essential and even more important than the filter sweep. Here's more detail about how Pete accomplished it. The Wikipedia entry I quoted earlier apparently cribbed from this source: http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/lowrey.html It also gives even more info on how to do Baba O'Riley (which by strange coincidence I was listening to on the radio this morning on my commute to work). This particular web page is a gold mine. Note also the links just below the title for guitar tabs (which you should be able to turn into actual pitches after a little study, even if you don't play guitar). PS. Here's even more about the how the VCS 3 works. This video is actually about a Synthi Model A, but that model has AFAIK exactly the same controls as a VCS 3, just physically arranged differently. Notice in this video a description of how the envelope generator can retrigger itself, basically turning into a second LFO. I had wondered where the square wave modulating the VCA came from if the dedicated LFO (there is only one) was already sweeping the filter. It could have come from yet another external piece of gear but no one mentioned anything. Now we know. Did I mention how much I love this stuff!!

I feel if this were still the eighties (where'd I put my time machine??) Thomas Dolby would be using an XW-P1 or G1 (or probably both!) to make his "The Golden Age of Wireless" album. You know, the one where he is posing as a mad scientist on the cover among all his "tubes and wires." (Maybe posing is the wrong word given that he IS a kind of a musical mad-scientist!) Any Photoshop wizards out there want to do a suitable mash-up? That one from last Thanksgiving still has me chuckling anytime I think of it. Here's a link to a decent res scan of the cover: http://blog-imgs-15-origin.fc2.com/r/e/r/reryo/thegoldenageofwireless.jpg

Oh, definitely a synthesist. Card-carrying, hard-core synthesist. (Well, not actually card carrying but I have a Physics degree kicking around here somewhere.) As a keyboardist I totally suck. There, it's out in the open now. I feel a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Ted, First of all, thank you big time for the detailed instructions. I appreciate how much work went into posting all that. Second, I hereby nominate you for Most Awesome XW-P1 User In The Universe. Really. You discovered an important, undocumented (by and large) feature of the XW-P1. I just knew there were hidden things in there to be found ("easter eggs"). Heck, with the state of that user manual how could there not be? Maybe the Casio engineers didn't really intend for this particular feature to be there - it just hung around in the code from something they were trying experimentally and they forgot to remove it - or maybe they did intend it and just forget to tell us about it (it's debatable whether the manual even hints at it, since several interpretations of that one line Brett quoted on page E-29 are possible - your interpretation turned out to be true!). As Brett mentioned, this functionality doesn't seem to care what modulation source is selected; it acts independently. And as everyone so far has noted it doesn't seem to exist outside of the Virtual Controller (VC) editing pages. And you can't save any of the changes it makes to the sound in the tone itself. But nevertheless it seems useful. As Brett has already said, with only a few keystrokes (e.g., use the right arrow once instead of the down arrow three times to get to the VirtualCont - > Ent menu item) you are there with another, completely programmable set of sliders for the solo-synth tone. And the resulting changes seem to survive going back into Performance or Sequence mode, as long as you don't change to any other tone. The sliders revert back to controlling the volume levels of the oscillators but the changes you already made in the VC menu using the sliders aren't affected. And they survive going back into the VC edit menu, so you can alternate between these modes with a few keystrokes. Brilliant. I have to say though that something about this functionality is a little flakey. I lost it entirely a couple of times for no apparent reason, which may explain why it didn't seem to work for me last night. However, I couldn't replicate how I lost it. So now I am concerned wth the fact that your CC#'s didn't work as VC sources when input from MIDI. That's what they are supposed to do! Are you certain you are inputting on the MIDI channel that is programmed for part/zone 1 in the current performance (which seems to default to MIDI channel 1)? And that MIDI IN is turned on in the general MIDI settings?

DOUBLE POST

A great song. This detail from Wikipedia may help: And there is this from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5voNyRmvXs (from a comment to the video: "Most likely on the record, it's the third oscillator on the VCS-3 sweeping the filter, and the trapezoid generator controlling the output. The trapezoid generator was the VCS-3's very unusual envelope generator, which could be set to create a looping effect, effectively turning it into a second LFO. By setting the attack and decay controls to zero, and then setting the "on" and "off" controls to the same settings, you get a square wave, which is what's giving you the sort of pulsing effect.”) So I don't think you will be entirely successful with a Hex Layer tone because the filters aren't sweepable in real time and neither of the Hex Layer's LFOs can control the filters. You CAN modulate the amplitude with an LFO and this will give a similar chopped/pulsed effect but going by the description above it will not sound exactly the same because the filter(s) would need to be swept as well at a much slower rate. UPDATE: You could in principle simulate a filter sweep by using a phrase or a control track on the step sequencer that operates knob K1 with that set to control cutoff frequency, which is the default assignment. The filter cutoff will then update only on every note but given how over-riding the chopping/pulsing is you might not be able to hear the difference. Given that the original was an organ sound processed by an analog synth I think you might get reasonably close by routing one of the P1's PCM organ tones (assuming any of them sounds similar enough to that particular Lowrey organ - I'm not near my P1 to audition them) or a combination of up to three layered/split PCM tones, through the solo synth's filter (how to do that has been described before here). You will have to modulate the filter's cutoff frequency (don't use any resonance) with one of the LFOs set to a square wave with a fairly fast rate (to match the rhythm of the pulsing) and using a fairly large amplitude. This should drive the filter's cutoff so low it will be like suddenly turning down the volume on the whole thing (thus simulating applying a square wave LFO to the VCA on a real analog synth where it is positioned after the filter, which the P1's solo synth doesn't have: it uses the virtual equivalent of VCA after each oscillator instead). Then set the second LFO to modulate the amplitude (depth) of the first LFO using a sine or triangle wave with a slow rate and moderate depth. You will need a virtual controller to do that. That should take care of the slow filter sweep (ensure nothing else modulates the filter's cutoff) during the times when the first LFO's waveform is high. UPDATE: I simplified my description above 'cause it was a little bit confusing! What you don't want happening is the phase of the LFO's resetting with every note. I'm not certain that setting LFO sync to "off" allows them to free run. You will have to try it and see. If not, then syncing to the clock might work. If not again, this approach just isn't going to work. If the above approaches don't work then you could try programming the whole thing in the step sequencer. Set your PCM organ tone(s) to the mixer parts that correspond to the sequencer tracks you are using. Or use a Hex Layer tone without an amplitude LFO and set the Solo 1 track to play part/zone 1. In either case the pulsing should be achievable by choosing a note length of, say, 50%. By using one or more control tracks you can modulate the filter cutoff frequency of the PCM tone(s) or the Hex Layer tone slowly during the length of a 16-note sequence. Chain multiple patterns together to get the whole thing. You will likely have to save the whole thing as a Performance (because of the interactions). If you use the solo synth approach you'll also be giving up the solo synth for making tones but that should be okay if you're trying to actually perform the song as it was recorded. Personally, I wouldn't use the arpeggiator. While it can play more than one note at a time in any chord that you finger (which is essential here) I don't see how a single arpeggio pattern can give you all the progressions I am hearing in that part of the song. If you don't elect to use the total step sequencer approach and assuming either of the solo synth or Hex Layer approaches works (thus taking care of the pulsing) just play the chords on the keyboard in real time, which is what Pete did. It doesn't sound overly difficult (says he who has not tried it himself!) If or when you are successful please share the resulting files with us here, or at the very least an mp3. I'm sure I speak for more than myself when I say I'd love to hear how close you get.

Hey Patrick, don't sweat over a little addiction. But this forum does have a purpose beyond something like Facebook (which I am not even on!). It provides help and advice for Casio keyboard owners. As long as you either need help or can give it posting to this forum is a healthy thing, IMO.

Ted, Are you running v1.11? I'm not, I'm still on V1.10. I don't get anything when I press ENTER while I'm in a virtual controller menu, regardless of which virtual controller is selected or how I selected it (part buttons or slider).

Ah, I didn't get that from your previous description. I will try it tonight. NONE of this is in the manual, of course. It tells you to press ENTER when the cursor is on the "VirtualCont - > Ent" menu item to edit the virtual controllers but it doesn't tell you to press ENTER again to access editing pages for the sliders that it also fails to mention even exist. I had no idea they were there. (BTW, didn't I say somewhere here that I wanted a synth that would provide endless challenges? The XW-P1 delivers again! )

Meant to say non-administrators rather than non-members. Fixed that above. Perhaps we could establish a SOP where posters could delete the text of the post and replace it with DOUBLE POST. Then when an admin has some time he/she (he today but in the future?) can search the threads for those that say only DOUBLE POST and delete them. BTW, double BOLLOCKS!!!

AFAIK there is no way for a non-administrators to delete posts. They will be here "forever", maybe surviving even as long as a MacDonald's hamburger can last out in the open without going moldy.

Not sure what you are asking. Are you asking how to assign different sounds (voices) to the sequencer tracks? Each of the tracks of the step sequencer operates one "mixer channel" (which is what I like to call them to avoid confusion with MIDI channels - the manual often but not consistently calls them "parts" and sometimes uses "parts" to mean sequencer tracks). There are 16 in the instrument and the step sequencer plays the last nine (#8 to #16). See page E-50 in the XW-P1 manual (E-51 in the G1 manual). You change the tone for each "mixer channel" (part) in the Mixer edit menus: Press the MIXER button and go from there (see page E-67 for P1, E-78 for G1). This is how you determine what sound each of your step-sequencer tracks will play. The Solo 1 track is a special case. Normally it would play "mixer channel" (part) #14. But you can choose instead to play "mixer channel" (part) #1. You do that in the Performance editor (see page E-65 for P1, E-74 for G1). You might know "mixer channel" (part) #1 better by its other name: Zone 1. The sound it plays can be either a PCM tone, a solo-synth tone, a drawbar organ tone or a Hex Layer tone. Zone 1 is the only zone that has this flexibility, which is why Casio gives you this option for the Solo 1 track. All the other zones and "mixer channels" (parts) can only play PCM tones. Note that if you select a drum set as the "tone" for a given track (which is the case by default for Drum 1 through 5) each key will play a different percussion instrument and hence the sounds you will hear on that track will also depend on what notes are played. You don't generally hear that on the Drum tracks because by default each of them plays a given type of percussion instrument (e.g., tom, snare, high-hat) and so plays only a very limited selection of notes in the scale that correspond to those instruments in a drum kit.

Funny thing about 70's disco. I used to have a T-shirt in high school (which I attended at just the time disco was popular) that said "Disco sucks!" You could actually get away with wearing it in school. It certainly expressed what my friends and I thought of that trend (the music, the dancing, the clothes). Today, when I hear a BeeGee's tune like "Stayin' Alive" on the radio I'm more apt to think, "Well, at least it was real music and they could actually sing without AutoTune."