bahman

In theory you can create your own rhythms patterns using the drum kits, save them to a MIDI track and then loop the track. According to manual and the specifications of the 560M this seems to be possible. But in practice you will be unable to do this properly. As discussed in several other threads in this forum, the 560M has a lot of features that at first sound very promising, but many of those end up either being poorly implemented or at least not being implemented as expected. I still have some hope that CASIO wants to retain its customers and releases firmware updates that address some of the issues of what could be a very good keyboard. The codebase for many of those updates is already available in other CASIO keyboard models, such as the MZ-X500. Anyway, and regarding your specific question: the track/MIDI player has a loop function. But the loop function introduces a short "pause" between the end of the track and before looping the track back from the beginning. And to make matters worse, the length of this pause is inconsistent, so you cannot even work around it. As a result, you will be unable to create seamless loops/repeating patterns using the MIDI player. A somewhat similar bug exists in the metronome as it produces an inconsistent pause between beats every once in a while if you leave it running long enough. I have reported these issues (and others) to CASIO months ago. The second issue is that the 560 has no such thing as MIDI sequencer/editor but just a basic MIDI recorder. So, features such as copying and pasting are not available. So, the only option you have left on the 560 is to record the complete drum track using the MIDI recorder. The realistic option is to use a proper MIDI editor on a computer to create the drum track (remember that the loop function does not work properly so you would need the full drum track).

If anyone is interested, I found that it is possible to set the number of metronome beats to zero in the settings menu and therefore remove the accent metronome sound.

The normal behaviour of the sustain pedal is to enable sustain only while pressing the pedal, just like in an acoustic piano. But you can go to the Controller settings on the main menu and reconfigure the behaviour of the pedal as you want (check pages EN-76 and EN-77 of the manual). To keep the settings after switching off the power go to System settings and set Auto-Resume to On.

I used my PC to create a loooooong MIDI file with a simple wood block sounding at each beat and imported it into the PX-560. This workaround solves my problem as I can speed up and slow down its tempo during playback. So, now I have a metronome without downbeat emphasis. Anyway, I still would like to know whether it is actually possible to create a rhythm in the PX-560. I found no way to create a repeatable rhythm pattern. It seems that if I want to edit/create a MIDI file with a rhythm pattern then I would have to play the entire rhythm section from beginning to the end. Am I wrong? I also tried editing one of the existing rhythms but I could only change the mixer settings and the instruments of each part. I found no way whatsoever to edit/change or define a rhythm pattern. This issue would be minimized if the 560 could correctly repeat a MIDI file, but its MIDI player introduces a gap at the end of a track before repeating it, which makes it useless for repetitions. Maybe this will get corrected in a firmware update.

Is it possible to create a new metronome-like pattern/rhythm in the PX-560? I just wanted a rhythm that produces a beat at each count without the emphasis (bell or similar) on the downbeat. I often use an external metronome but I would like an internal metronome when using headphones. I also have read about a metronome solution for the PX-5S in this forum but unfortunately it seems it does not apply to the PX-560. So, I have tried recording a file with the MIDI recorder that is just a couple of measures long using a drum sound at each beat count and then quantizing the track afterwards. This works as intended. I then try playing back the MIDI file with repeat on to get the metronome-like sound. The problem is that the MIDI player seems unable to make a seamless transition between the end of the track and the start of the repeat. I have tried adding rests at the beginning and end of the track, but there is always an uneven gap when the MIDI file repeats. Is there any way to create/edit a pattern/rhythm that resembles a metronome? Or is it possible to repeat a MIDI file seamlessly? Or would it be just simpler to use an external PC to create a really long MIDI file with the beats and then copy it to the PX-560? Maybe a better solution is just connecting my smartphone where I have a metronome app to the PX-560 via aux or line-in, but then I need to buy a cable to be able to do that.

I have been trying some of the registrations and tones that are available in the downloads section (btw, thank you for the contributions!) and I have bumped into a minor issue. Some of the registrations change the behaviour of the knobs as expected. But can I somehow reset the knobs to some default value? If I turn off "Auto Resume" then the knobs do reset (this is explained in the Appendix of the Manual). But is there any way to reset the knobs without restarting the piano? Or the only way is to define a registration with my "default" knob values and then use this registration to reset the knobs? This situation is annoying in the "grand piano" mode because this mode does not reset the knobs (again this is shown in the Appendix), which means the systems ends up with knob settings that do not apply to this mode.

Having continuous pedalling on the PX-560 is excellent news! And I did fail to find that thread about the PX-350/360 and the SP-33. Sorry. I guess I will keep the SP-33 after all and buy a dedicated expression pedal. Thanks!

Thanks! This severely limits the usefulness of the SP-33 pedal unit. The half-damper function is only available with the SP-33 unit and it cannot be achieved by a pedal connected to the input damper pedal socket which for some reason just accepts on/off inputs. It seems it is only possible to assign a continuous function to a pedal connected to the assignable/expression pedal socket. Finally, the function of the SP-33 pedals cannot be reassigned. And I just read here that the SP-33 pedals do not not provide a full range signal output (i.e. from 0 to 127) but just three signals (something like 0/off, 64/half pedal depressed, 127/full pedal depressed). If this is true, then the only option is indeed to use an extra pedal as expression/function pedal because even rewiring the SP-33 pedals wouldn't work. It seems there were some bad technical decisions here...

What functions can be assigned to the pedals on the Casio SP-33 3 pedal unit (connected to a PX-560)? The out-of-the-box functions are damper/half-damper, soft and sostenuto. But can I assign other functions to the SP-33 pedals? I want to use one of the SP-33 pedals as a continuous expression pedal to control effects and so on. Is that possible? Or do I need to use an extra pedal connected to "assignable pedal" jack on the back of the unit to do that (manual page EN-10)? I was expecting the SP-33 pedals to be fully configurable and to be able to use them to actually replace the function of the "assignable pedal", but I have found no clear instructions on the manual about this.