Ebonivor

Ah, Choppin, I forgot to explain that MIDI Designer strips out the beginning F0 and ending F7 but sends them universally. I was initially just typing in the basic real-time messages as described in the Midi implementation Manual, but got nowhere with trying to understand the more complex messages that included Block, Size and Array details. Then Mike Martin told me that he had found a simple way to pass the message to MIDI Designer from the Data Editor by setting the PX-5S USB Out to MIDI and having MD learn the string. The result is the type of string the I posted. In MIDI Designer, for a variable control, you replace the value with V and specify the number of bytes in the value. You can also replace the channel byte with L to be able to also vary that. I can't find any relationship between the "learnt" string and the details given in the manual. I was actually hoping that you might be able to decipher it!

Interestingly, I can have MIDI Designer control the master volume with the standard message 7F 7F 04 01 00 V (V=value), but if I get ti to learn the sysex sent by the Data Editor, the string is 44 17 02 7F 01 02 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 V which also works. I can't see the relationship between the two, particularly, like you, the significance of the 03.

This is probably getting a bit far away from Normski's topic, but I would love to explore the mysteries of the PX-5S MIDI implementation further...perhaps directly via PM any time if you like.

BTW I now understand that 7F in the channel area of the message doesn't mean channel 127, but rather :disregard channel"

Hi mau Van, answer to question 1 is, Yes, you will have to buy the MIDI package (in-app purchase).

Question 2 - I have a blank Set List Maker template that has the MIDI codes for all stage settings, but you would need to create you own lists (I think I also still have something set up with both the original factory stage setting names and the alternative settings). I'll see what I can find in the next few days and either upload it here if I can, or send it directly to you.

Question 3 - I'm not sure, but I think so. I don't have a second keyboard to test it with, so maybe someone else can confirm.

Everybody, why is it so important to be able to control the master volume with a MIDI foot controller? I agree that there would be many benefits from having the abilty to control individual zones or parameters with an expression pedal, but not the master volume.

I use a Boss FV-50L between the PX-5S and my amp and it works just fine. It has stereo in and out, plus adjustable minimum volume.

I can understand Normski's disappointment that the Behringer 1010 doesn't support sysex on the expression pedal. It seems almost as much of an oversight as Casio's omission of an expression pedal input .... but then, look at everything else you DO get on the PX-5S ... there's no denying that it's incredible value for money!

That is exactly as I understand it Choppin, except I didn't realise there was a MIDI channel 7F (127). The MIDI Designer captured sysex string for the Master Volume indicates channel 1 (00) I think, but I might be interpreting it incorrectly. In fact, I'm not sure that I can interpret it at all! :-) In this case, 7E is the value.

44 17 02 7F 01 02 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 7E

HI Rogerft, it is unfortunate that the free version of MIDI Designer is no longer available, however, it was at the time the initial announcement was made. 

The developer of the MIDI Designer app is probably one of the most supportive that I have ever come across and those of us who use the app extensively have no qualms about paying for it. That said, it does put Casio in an awkward position, but you can rest assured that Mike Martin (who is incidentally not just a salesman, but the designer of most of the best PX-5S sounds and a dedicated provider of support), will be doing his utmost to deliver on the promise. In fact, it is Mike who is doing the programming and he also produced the XW version. How he has the time to do all that he does is astounding.

I am also working on a similar MIDI Designer layout, in fact with many more features than that which was announced, but there are some issues with the app that are preventing me from releasing it for general use. I imagine that Mike may have also been affected by some of those, but the developer is working hard to resolve them for us. In the meantime, most of us have so much to thank Mike Martin for that the delay with the MIDI Designer app pales into insignificance.

One last thing...don't expect any version of a MIDI Designer interface to perform all the functions of the Data Editor. There are aspects that simply cannot be addressed.

One more last thing :-) ...my eyesight also is not what it used to be and it doesn't help that monitors are getting bigger but the pixel pitch is getting smaller! My 24" monitor has a native resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. My wife is always complaining that the text is too small when I get her to do some work for me, so I switch it to 1600x1200 for her. She needs to do bit more scrolling, but not as much as on the iPad Air!

Normski, I'm pretty much a MIDI novice and too old to learn (unlike Choppin, whose knowledge and ability to communicate it is admirable), but I'm fairly sure that System level parameter are sent and received on channel 1. I only know this from setting up MIDI Designer layouts and using MD to 'learn' the sysex.

Gee, I need at least five stars just for reading the list! I don't remember QED...was gender was he/she?

BTW there was a Len McCann, passed on now, who was a member of the family that established and still own the store that I bought my PX-5S through...McCann Bros in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. He also had a dance band, surprisingly called The Len McCann Dance Band, but he was a saxophonist.

Thanks for asking that question dc2K...I had wondered whether that was purely an offset adjustment. It's nice to have it clarified and confirmed.

Master volume is easily controllable with sysex...I use it with the MIDI Designer iPad app, so I guess it should also be able to be accomplished via hardware, as Mike Martin has suggested.

Political correctness isn't your strong suit, is it Hugh? Love it! ;-)

Ooooh....dangerous territory there Hugh! I hope the ladies know you are joking...you are, aren't you?

Excellent step-by-step explanation dc2K!

Hugh, I just got around to checking out those couple of female vocalists you mentioned...very nice! Took me back to the late 60s when I played (guitar) with a band called Quartet Bossa Nova. It also inspired me to dust off some old favourite albums - Rainforest by Walter Wanderley (organ), and 'Wave' and "The Composer of 'Desifinado', Plays" by Antonio Carlos Jobim. I'd forgotten just how wonderfully relaxing they were. Thanks for reminding me.

Very nice. When's the album being released...I'll buy it. Quite apart from your excellent playing, I like the subtlety of your drum work...it reminds me very much of a highly respected session drummer that I sometimes get to work with. He knows just what to play and what not to play, and obviously you have that same philosophy.

Every PX-5S should come complete with an iPad and MIDI Designer! :-)

I have a layout with Master EQ, Master Compressor, DSP, MIDI Transpose and lots more...in fact, it grows more and more nearly every day! The great thing about it is that I can store presets of the parameters for one-touch access...and buttons for bypass and reset to defaults etc. I'm planning to upload some variations to the MIDI Designer site soon, but I wasn't planning on including the Master and System control pages, but maybe I should put them up separately...they can work well as an add-on to Mike Martin's original MD layout.

First up, have you formatted the USB drive using the PX-5S? If not, you must do that before it can be used ( instructions are on page E-31 of the Basic manual that comes with the instrument). If you have done this, a folder named MUSICDAT will have been created. You must put any files in this folder for the PX-5S to be able to see them.

For what it's worth, I already have a transpose function set up in MIDI Designer as part of a layout I've been working on. There are two options: buttons for plus and minus 6 semitones; and another that uses a knob to cover plus and minus 12 semitones with up and down buttons and octave plus and minus buttons. It merely uses sysex messages to vary the PX-5S main coarse tuning. There are a couple of minor issues that I would like to improve and I might need to seek some help on those from SuperDan at MIDI Designer. I suspect that I have taken a different approach to the version Mike is working on, but all in all it works.

I'm not sure whether I can post MD pages or layouts here, but I'm happy to email them to anyone who is interested in trying them out. Send me a PM in you like.

I'll eventually upload the layouts, which include stage setting change buttons and knobs, pitch wheel controls, drum pads, tone preset buttons etc., to the MIDI Designer site, but I'm keen to see the final result of Mike's efforts first (in particular, he has already implemented System EQ which I have also been working on - I want to be able to use MD's presets to be able to adjust the EQ for different amps etc).

I have a a number of different MIDI Designer layouts that are designed to quickly change Stage Settings. There is one that gives one-button access to the first 20 settings; one for the first 30; one that allows presetting of 15 Stage Settings selected from the entire 100; and one that has a big knob to dial quickly through all 100 wih buttons to step to previous and next setting.

There are a couple of minor issues that I would like to sort out, but generally they function well.

I'm not sure whether I can post them here or only to the MIDI Designer forum, but I'm happy to share them.

There are also some more complex and song/performance specific ones that I have as well, but I'm trying to get my head around sysex to be able to control some functions like transposition, EQ etc. Hopefully it won' be long before Mike's new layout containg those features will be available, then I see how it's done and implement them in my layouts.

(PS: Mike Martin, If you are reading this, perhaps you might consider emailing me the page as it is, so that I can see how you've done it and then complete my offerings :-). I understand that you are very busy man and that developing any professional quality app takes a lot of time, and I also understand that you might not want to let something out into the wild that might not be fully tested)

Good advice HectorSpace. 40 odd years ago i had a band with a front line consisting of trumpet, sax and trombone. In those days, I was the guitarist, lead vocalist and arranger.

I was just recently needing to get a gutsy brass sound for Sea Cruise and set about building a hex tone ( I have drums on zone 1, brass on zone 2, piano on zone 3 and bass on zone 4, all controlled via MIDI Designer). Individually, played with just single nots, the tone was sounding great...it had saxes, trumpets, trom, and brass section filling all six layers. I played around with the hex layer mix using Mike Martin's MIDI Designer hex layer controls until I got it sounding just right. Then I put it into practice... It was dreadful!

I realised that all that I really needed was trumpet, sax and trom, just like I had used back in the day. I got rid of the rest and voila! You're right...I had forgotten that less is more!

Good luck trying to follow the manual Carrotsails, it's the most disjointed manual I have ever encountered, with the way you need to jump backwards and forwards for even the simplest instruction. I guess at least it saves a few trees!

I'll try to explain the method as simply as possible:

1) Ensure that you have formatted the USB stick for the PX-5S. If not, follow the instructions on page E31 of the User Guide (Basics) that came with the instrument - or download it from the link the Scott posted.

2) With the USB stick plugged in, press and HOLD the Media button button until the display shows "Media" and "SMF Play" etc.

3) Press the "Exit" button

4) Press the "Audio Recorder" button (don't hold). This is the same button used to mount the USB stick. The adjacent blue light will light up. The display will show "Audio Select" and "TAKE XX".

5) Press the "Audio Recorder" button again and the light will start flashing. The blue light above the "Record" button will also start flashing and the show "Audio Standby" and "TAKE XX" (where XX is the incremental number that is assigned to each recording).

6) Press the "Record" button or simply start playing to start recording. Operating any pedal, slider or knob will also start the recording. The blue "Record" light will stop flashing and remain lit while recording. A light above the "Start/Stop" button will start flashing.

7) Stop recording by pressing the "Record" button (not the Start/Stop button). The "Audio Recorder" light will continue flashing until the file has finished writing and then remain lit.

8) To playback the file, press the "Start/Stop". Press it again to stop playback. The playback will also stop automatically at the end of the recording.

9) If you wish to delete the recording, press the "Enter" button and confirm with the "Yes" button.

10) To record again, repeat the steps from 6)

11) To exit recording mode, either press the "Audio Recorder" button twice or simply press the "Exit" button.

To playback existing recordings, follow the steps as far as 4), navigate to the file you want with the "-/No" and "+/Yes" buttons and then control the playback with the "Start/Stop" button.

I hope that makes it clearer. Just a word of advice... keep a notebook handy to write down meaningful notes or names of the recordings, because the PX-5S will only allow "NOTE XX" for the file names. Anything else won't be recognised.

Good luck!

Agreed. 

I do like your idea of using the Write button on the keyboard. I was initially thinking that you would have to reload the data to to bring them back into sync, but at that stage, the data on the keyboard and that in the editor WOULD be the same. I'm going to try this method. Since I always save a copy to either the computer or the usb stick before editing, I can always go back to that if I need to.

Actually, pax-eterna, I just re-read your post and realised you were talking about the protocols - not the speed of the usb data path. So I guess it is an issue that might be addressable in software.

I totally agree that it is slow...and frustrating. But I'm not sure that the usb speed is at fault. I think it might have more to do with polling the large number of parameters ( I assume using sysex ), comparing the status of the data in the editor and then writing it back to the PX-5S.

I could be way off the mark since I have only a limited understanding of midi, but there is a discussion on the MIDI Designer forum regarding a request for the settings in the app being updated when a device's controls were changed. The difficulty in doing so is apparently related to the amount of data that actually needs to be transferred.

The other indicator that it is not necessarily the usb speed of the PX-5S is the fact that my MacBook Pro with its i7 quad core processor handles the data updates much faster than my slower processor Compaq laptop, yet both are USB 2.0 with the same specs. So the bottleneck might be Data Editor.

I'm sure that somebody with far more knowledge than me can provide a factual explanation.

It doesn't really matter what anyone says, at the end of the day individual preferences will vary. Pax-eterna, your demonstration was very interesting and I understand your preference for using a source that is a constant, just as using a tone generator to test speaker responses is the norm.

However, if we were to only base purchases on synthetically produced results and there were no other factors to be considered, we would all end up using the same products - the ones with the best test results. But when we don't have physical access to a product, these kinds of tests are often all we have to go on. Fortunately, we also have enthusiastic people like PianoManChuck who obviously loves to share his unbiased hands-on experiences.

Like many others on the forum and the Facebook group, I was unable to actually see or try a PX-5S before buying. I spent countless hours researching it and a variety of other keyboards and PianoManChuck's videos were invaluable - in fact, he can take credit for me now being a proud owner. So, thank you PianoManChuck... and thank you Pax-eterna for posting this topic. I am now much wiser! :-)

Katie, thanks for uploading this. I love it! I've just used it to replace my attempt at constructing a better string sound in a recording I'm currently producing and it is just perfect. Just what I was looking for and so rich!! Well done.