CasioCTK

Keyboard buyers are mostly players only, partly musicians who create songs and very small part of musicians who create sounds and rhythms for their keyboard. Silvano with his knowledges and experience belongs to this last very small group.
Other buyers can in this respect rely on keyboard manufacturers and tones/rhythms creators only. Choice and offer of tones and rhythms for a keyboard  depends (probably) on market share. And in this regard Casio loses points. In wide area around no band uses Casio keyboard. Professionals here use Yamaha/Korg only.

After buying Yamaha SX700 I understood why it is so. I like acoustic instruments and these voices are superb here (sorry Silvano, you cannot do more than MZ-X engine allows). There is also wide choice of free and payed voices and styles (rhythms). In short time I downloaded over 2000 very good styles just from range of my interest - jazz, swing, ballroom, rumba, beguine and samba. There are many free and payed packs from Yamaha, too. Try to compare it with what is offered for Casio.

So, there are also other views here than how somebody can tweak his keyboard. Many others cannot do the same.

12 hours ago, Brad Saucier said:

The OPs original question was how to record pad data to a MIDI recorder track or convert/export pad data as a standard MIDI file.  Pad phrases can be recorded by DAW software.  The MZ will output MIDI data as the pads playback phrases.    

 

Thank you Brad for inspiration, I try to use some midi recorder in computer for recording pad phrases.

12 hours ago, nuno74 said:

I don't think you understand the question.  We would like to record a midi pattern "like an arpeggio" to a pad, from an external midi device, but it wont record.  

Brad understood my question correctly. I want to record existing pad phrase into MIDI file.

I would like to record some pads (percussion loops only) as MIDI, but no pad sound is recorded, regardless if accompaniment is playing or not. Changing port A10 to A09 or A11 has changed the instrument played. Which settings are needed to get pads into .mid file?

Thank you Jokeyman123 and Silvano Silva for your good hints.. Especially that Silvano's last post, which pointed me to the fact, that I need ready made keyboard with out of box good rhythms and tones of acoustic instruments and a big choice of other available rhythms and tones, was very helpful to me. Finally a couple of days ago arrived my new Yamaha PSR-SX700.

This answer I got today from pcpanik-Musik on his YouTube channel:

„The AKX-10 has better natural instruments then the MZ-X series from Casio. And a better keyboard 🎹. But missing the great style editing functionality from Casios MZ-X. To be honest: both, Casio MZ-X500 and AKX10 have some big flaws in their software, which make both not a great choice if you are planing to create your own styles for specific songs. But Medeli will maybe fix some of those issues, while Casio stopped developing anything for the MZ-X series years ago. In my opinion the MZ-X500 was a great idea to build a companion keyboard, workstation and multilayer Synthesizer with a 16-key midi controller in one product, but the implementation was poor and the natural Instruments sound even worse.“

Thank you Jokeyman123,

there is no store in my country where I could try and listen to that AKX10. Therefore I had some kind of hope that maybe somebody from this forum had such possibility to try this keyboard personally, not just listen it on YouTube only. That's why I asked here. But every answer and advice is appreciated.

For me, visibility of Medeli's backlighted buttons is much better than Casio's black buttons on black panel. Also 7“ touchscreen could be a plus. Four Quick settings for every rhythm/style (Registration memory), 3 buttons for easy switching or layering tones during playing on keyboard and 3 assignable switches seems to me very attractive.
Therefore I am asking about quality of tones and rhythms. Some reviewers wrote that AKX10 tones are nearly as good as some 2000$ keyboards, other that its tones are nearly unusable. So you can choose whom to believe. I need just comparison between AKX10 and MZX.
As for rhythms, on planetkeyboard.com there are 8 rhythm packs for Casio MZX and 29 rhythm packs for this Medeli. It looks like Medeli is much more supported by other vendors even now than Casio MZX ever was.
And what will happen with Casio or Medeli companies or keyboards in next 5 years? I don't ask. I am 75...

It looks like Medeli AK-X10 could be good substitution or even upgrade for Casio MZ-X 300/500 owners. Can anybody compare quality of tones and rhythms in these keyboards?

Synchronizing start of playing pad with accompaniment is described in manual. But how to synchronize stop playing pad with accompaniment? I would like to stop playing pad (loop) and accompaniment when pressing button Stop Accompaniment. Is it possible or is there some workaround?

Hello Alex16,

Event is any instrument or drums/percussion note/sound in rhythm accompaniment. By event editing you can add and delete any note/sound or change its instrument, pitch, volume, duration and placing in the bar.

Hopefully it helps a little.

Thank you, Silvano. Great advice. It helped. At the beginning I was afraid that my keyboard may be bricked if data transfer from USB stick or their processing was incorrect, but everything went without any problem. After reinstalling firmware I did factory reset to clean up memory - hopefully it is better than fulfilling memory and defragmenting it.

Now everything works again and I don't need to send my keyboard to repair center. I am happy again. Thank you very much.

Yes, it was also my first thought. Therefore I used 3 different USB flash drives with the same result.

Today I tried to load some 10 tones from USB drive into my MZ-X300. Loading the last of them seemed to be extremely long, although the file was small - keyboard was frozen. After switching off and on again, no one of new and many of previously loaded and used tones could be played. Names of them are displaywed, but there is no sound. When I saved them to USB drive, those files are small and all of them end with text „UserSplit“ and some numbers (displayed in Windows Notepad). They are corrupt.
When trying to load tones, sometimes there is message Wrong Data and sometimes everything looks OK. But after displaying Complete, there is no name of tone displayed (only UserXXX) and no sound.
When trying to load rhythms, everything looks OK. But after displaying Complete, there is displayed name of rhythm, but no rhythm can be played and it is not possible to delete it, because Execute button is dimmed.
I did some testing according advice some years ago here in this forum. These are my results:
DDR RAM CHECK
DDR2 Auto
Nch:06
Pch:06

FLASH CHECK
SumChk:OK

USB ChECK
USB:NG

USB HOST CHECK
nothing displayed

RAM CHECK
RAM:OK

Can anybody tell me what happened and what to do with my keyboard?
Many thanks in advance.

Hi Creydeaux,

according to CTK-4400 user manual you can edit only built-in rhythms (rhythm number, part on/off, tone number, volume level, left/right speaker balance, reverb depth, chorus depth) and save them as user rhythms - page 45. I couldn't find anything about importing other rhythms.

Thank you Brad and Jokeyman123.
In Anvil Studio I found 8 bars full of pauses in Track 11, Channel 10. The only idea I got when looking at those pauses was to copy and paste them again into the same track and channel to see what will happen. And guess what happened - I saw 8 bars with notes followed by 8 bars full of pauses only. And when playing that track, those bars with notes sounded with normal volume and those with pauses only sounded with low volume.

Anyway this is the way (at least for me) how to process drums recorded in MIDI.

On my MZ X-300 in Midi Recorder I have recorded just drums part of an accompaniment. Then through Media - Save - MIDI Recording SMF I saved .mid file to USB stick. That file has some 3 kB and when played on computer, there can be heard some drums, but no note is displayed in Anvil Studio or MidiEditor. Even when looking at midi events, there are midi events for 1 bar only there. I don't know how to visualize that somewhere in that file existing drums sound in Anvil Studio or elsewhere.

What have I done incorrectly and how can I export drums part of an accompaniment in midi format correct way? Many thanks for any help in advance.

Yes, it can - Import SMF.

It would be nice if Casio launched something like Casiotone Travel - Casiotone CT-S series based keyboard with 44 full size keys, max. 65 cm long, 100 tones, 100 rhythms with fill-ins, numerical keypad for selecting tones/rhythms, large display with good visibility (see Yamaha PSR A50/F30), octave shift, 2 user programmable buttons for favorite tones memory and ability to play rhythms/midi files from USB drive.
It could be much more useful than the old SA series or CTK-240 keyboards today. What do you think of it?

I decided to buy Stagg melodica as my first minikeyboard. It has just 1 tone, no rhythms, no display, but has „breath sensitive“ keys, small size, small weight and is cheap. Ideal for trying to switch between mini and standard keys. After some time I shall see if „mini“ is any good for me.

Thank you, Jokeyman123. I was dreaming about small „travel“ keyboard, but it looks like having 2 keyboards with different key size is not very clever idea. I was afraid of that. 🙁

Hmmmm. Nobody has any experience with playing on mini keyboards?

I am considering buying another keyboard - small Yamaha PSS-A50 - for occasional playing anywhere outdoors, just for my pleasure. But, it has smaller keys (minikeys) than my MZ-X300. And I am afraid this could cause problems for my fingers (or my head?) when switching from one size to another one. Has anybody personal experience with using keyboards with different key sizes? Thank you for any help.

On 9/20/2019 at 10:26 PM, Popsel said:

Hi,
the following information is a snippet of my own manuals written for my MZ-X.

MZ-X Service Mode German.PDF 156.33 kB · 10 downloads

Hallo Popsel,

I tried to do all memory checks. Flash and RAM checks showed status OK, but DDR RAM check showed this result:

DDR2 AUTO
Nch:06
Pch:06

Do you know what does this result mean?

Thank you in advance for any help

On 9/6/2019 at 11:49 AM, Popsel said:

You can make the instrument unusable in service mode if you are unfamiliar with it. There is always a risk of unintentionally changing something. In service mode, the buttons have different functions than normal. I do not know if I should provide the information here. I do not want to be responsible if users make their instrument unusable due to wrong settings.

So what do you think about it?

It would be useful (at least for people experienced in electronics) to know how to enter into service mode, which options are there and what are button functions in service mode. And of course how to return back to normal mode.🙂

I am interested especially in memory checking.