shiihs

I'd check the manual for the "factory reset" procedure before throwing it in the bin

If you ever do try it, be sure to ask for help if you get stuck!

in the mean time, not for the faint of heart, there's a new version with multifile checkboxes: if you leave display name empty, it reuses the old one; if you leave new filename empty it reuses the old one multifile 4 variation rhythm splitter: no special intelligence is present for handling .ac7 files with less than 4 variations (and I have to confess I haven't tested what happens when you try it anyway). Have fun! https://drive.google.com/file/d/12NKv9eiYcpqb3p6yBYsBYkpam8t-M7DB/view?usp=sharing

Everything you mention is already possible, except for combining things from different .AC7 files. That would be a lot of effort for what I feel is not a very common use case.

You are right, I made an error there. I'll take a look to see how easy it is to add the checkboxes you propose.

@Mclandy Actually, upon inspection of the source code, I suspect if you leave the new name empty the old name will automatically be reused. So it should unlock everything and keep the existing name if you don't specify a new name.

At the moment no provisions are made: the bulk editing predates the unlocking implementation so back then it made more sense to just skip the rhythms without new name. I could easily add something like that though.

@Mclandy true, but his notes also contain combinations of certain variations with other fills. So whatever we come up will either have to be very general (but I'm not sure in that case bulk editing will bring a lot of advantage, unless you create a list of all desired combinations beforehand, like Chandler did (but perhaps no one else but him does )) or, if this feature is mostly used for exploration purposes then a default split 1+2, 3+4 should be sufficient.

@vbdx66 in that case I could e.g. think about adding a quick "rhythm split" button in the multiple files tab, which turns every rhythm into 2 rhythms: I1+V1+V2+F1+F2+E1 and I2+V3+V4+F3+F4+E2. For rhythms that are missing some of the higher variations/intros/endings, some fallback to the lower variations can be implemented, or an error can be shown. If the only intention is to make invisible elements visible for exploration purposes this approach is probably sufficient, but it doesn't guarantee that the variations are conveniently grouped. If they are not grouped well, you would still need to remap the original rhythm via the single files tab. Does that make sense?

That represents a lot of work @Chandler Holloway! @vbdx66, I guess this also implies that one shared voice reordering for all rhythms in a folder is not super useful also in your use case? I still don't have a good idea how to add such functionality in the tool in a user friendly way. Chandler's scans perhaps are a good starting point to think about a specialized notation for concisely specifying a remapping (but it has to be general enough to unambiguously deal with all possible remappings that make sense to a user). E.g. there's an additional complication that many older .ac7 files do not have a variation 3, so what should happen if one still asks to use variation 3 in such case? In short, if anyone has suggestions on how to specify remapping for bulk changes that is also user friendly, I'm happy to hear about them, but at the moment I don't see a very good solution...

Thanks for trying this out @Mclandy. I am more confident than ever now that the combined efforts of everyone in this forum thread have led to nailing the basics of understanding the undocumented binary .ac7 file format . There are some remaining parameters in the .ac7 files generated by newer model Casios that I cannot interpret correctly and since I don't own such model I also cannot set up any experiments to further reverse engineer those (but I have enough information to keep those sections as binary blobs and carry them around with the rest of the info that I do understand, so it is possible to modify file contents without corrupting the files).

I guess the easiest would be to make the multi file tab reuse the custom ordering specified in the single file tab. In principle it should be possible to use intro2 and ending2 in the way you imagine, but I cannot test it myself. There's one possibility that some of these higher-numbered styles would reference instruments that are not known on the lower-end models, so you might manually have to revise some of the mixer settings to correct the instrument mapping...

It's not entirely clear to me how you envision something like this to work: do you want to specify one reordering for all rhythms in the list, or a separate reordering per rhythm?

Did you notice the "multiple files" tab? It also allows for loading a complete folder of rhythms to enable bulk editing, but at the moment, variation swapping cannot be indicated in that tab. A command line version of the program could be an alternative of course, but perhaps imposes a higher "minimal tech-savvyness" on the users.

Hi Vinciane, First of all, I'm sorry for your loss. This time of year usually is quite hard for those who've lost loved ones. As for the dummies guide: it would be interesting if you could just try it out, and where you get stuck/confused, let me know. Those are the parts that warrant some improvements/clarifications. The basic work flow should be straightforward: make a backup of your rhythms before you start editing them; one never knows load an .AC7 file using the load button type the desired display name in the "desired display name" text field then, if you want to: tweak the desired ordering of variations at the bottom: the top row (grayed out) lists the current ordering, and in the bottom row you can select the desired ordering. E.g if you wanted to copy variation 3 into variation 1, you'd select variation 3 in the bottom row under variation 1 in the top row. Note: you can resize the user interface window using the mouse if you cannot see all the options simultaneously. save the .AC7 file (give it a new name) During saving, all tracks are automatically unlocked for editing.

Hello @Chandler Holloway, if it works for you, no other files will be needed - thanks for all the help in the previous years. However, feel free to provide some usability feedback (details in the ui or workflow that could be improved: e.g. since it could be the user's only intention to unlock tracks, would it perhaps make sense to automatically fill in the desired name as the current name when loading a style?).

If I didn't mess up, a brand-new ReStyle should be available from the following link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_SkmluRAnYKe7vxNRuRxtqVWhKWqVcVn/view?usp=sharing

That's brilliant!! I will update the restyle code asap and make a new windows binary. Thanks for helping!

One very interesting part is that they think the order of elements in the ac7 file is different from what I had guessed. (This has nothing to do with the ordering in the UI, it is about ordering in the file) They think: 1: "Intro" 2: "Variation 1" 3: "Fill 1" 4: "Variation 2" 5: "Fill 2" 6: "Ending" 7: "Intro 2 (unused)" 8: "Variation 3" 9: "Variation 4" 10: "Fill 3" 11: "Fill 4" 12: "Ending 2 (unused)" But I guessed: 1: "Intro" 2: "Variation 1" 3: "variation 2" 4: "Fill 1" 5: "Fill 2" 6: "Ending" 7: "Intro 2" 8: "Ending 2" 9: "Variation 3" 10: "Fill 3" 11: "Fill 4" 12: "Variation 4" From the earlier experiments, I remember you said "Variation 3 and Fill-In 3 are correctly swapped into the Normal/Fill-In1 slot" So that means I swap slots 9 <-> 2 and slots 10 <-> 4. If they were right about the order of elements it should have resulted in Variation 4 <-> Variation 1 and Fill 3 <-> Variation 2. That doesn't seem to be what you described. So I think their ordering might be wrong as well. I think I have the correct order for at least slots 1-6. The other ones I cannot test. One very interesting observation is that they think Ending 2 is in slot 12, and is always unused (empty) on CT-X. Slot 12 is where I thought variation 4 lives, so if I copy "my" var 4 slot (slot 12) into something else, it would indeed result in a blank part. Therefore I think we need to set up an experiment on a 4 variation model to establish without doubt what the correct ordering is of the different elements in the file. The experiment I would like to propose is to take a rhythm, and produce - using they keyboard - 12 variations of it: Variation 0 = the original rhythm without modifications Variation 1 = the original rhythm, but only the intro changed (e.g. change/delete some/all notes) Variation 2 = the original rhythm, but only variation 1 (normal) changed Variation 3 = the original rhythm, but only variation 2 changed etc... By systematically examining the differences between each of the variations and the original rhythm, it should be easy to establish once and for all the correct ordering of elements in the ac7 file. Only when the ordering is correct has the swapping a chance of working as expected. Does that sound like something that is "doable" ?

In the mean time I would also like to draw everyone's attention to a new project I found on github: https://github.com/michgz/ac7maker This should be interesting for studying how they understand the internals of the AC7 file format.

I'll have to make a new binary build, as I suspect the last binary doesn't actually include the unlocking code.

I have added the unlocked version in attachment, sorry if this is too late for you. I haven't actually tested it, but at least the file length changed, so I have some faith it has worked XmasUnlocked.AC7

Unlocked indeed means "make it editable". The unlocked .ac7 file should have a slightly longer file length (a few bytes) than the locked version - you could check that to see if the tool actually applied the unlocking. The AC7 format should not be fundamentally different for CT-X keyboards.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qZ94jTcJ_joW0SoYwmhOTG0ntApunzqv/view?usp=sharing If I remember well, the above version should unlock all tracks as they are saved (can't test it at the moment).

@Chandler Holloway There's one thing we (or at least I) haven't really thought about: rhythms made for more advanced instruments will sometimes reference sounds that do not exist on less advanced keyboards. So to be complete, in addition to variation swapping there should also be instrument editing...