shiihs

@markonis I'm not sure if this is the same thing that @- T - alluded to, but it is my experience in interacting with other synthesizers that sending/receiving very large sysex over USB can be tricky due to timing issues. I suffered specifically from the following problem: if one sends data to a hw synth too fast, the synth is not guaranteed to be able to process it in time and data randomly gets overwritten, potentially leaving the synth in a weird state. A second problem I suffered from was failing to limit the midi datavalues to range 0-127 in all cases. This too caused my synth to do really weird stuff by starting to interpret datavalues as commands. So be sure to clip the datavalues appropriately at all times (Just trying to help you avoid a few sleepless nights ) The solution for the timing problems when sending sysex to a synth normally is to "chunk" sysex messages (i.e. divide it into smaller blocks and insert a delay between sending the successive blocks). None of the available midi libraries that I'm aware of, however, seem to directly expose such chunking of sysex messages with delays in between out of the box (although popular low-level midi applications like midi-ox (windows) and sysex librarian (mac), and amidi (linux) all implement this technique). I'm not certain if the CASIO sysex messages would be large enough to cause such problems - I haven't attempted making any dumps yet - but it may be something to keep an eye on from the start. Sysex of a few KB never caused me any issues (but even that may depend on the speed of the computer being used). I was trying to send sysex messages of several megabytes at the time. (I was reminded of this problem when @- T - spoke of missing data when using datamanager, which may in fact be the exact same problem I experienced). Anyway, best of luck to everyone trying to further unlock the full potential of these machines.

@Chandler Holloway Changing the length of the name is tricky because the ac7 file format embeds offsets to the start of each of the different section types in the binary data, and these offsets become invalid if you change the name length. Usually before a string (like the name of the rhythm), also the string length is embedded, so that needs to remain in sync as well. Anyway, you can always use "space" characters to make too long names appear shorter, but making short names longer will take a smarter tool that actually understands the contents of the files. Your suggestion for making such renamer (which then correctly handles making longer names etc) therefore sounds like a good first application of a parser. Don't get your hopes up too high yet. It'll still take considerable work to get the parser in good shape (or any shape, really - I can only parse a first part of the files so far). *Sigh* Things would be a ton easier if we had extensive reference documentation on how the files are structured, but in the absence of such docs, there's a lot that can be done - it just takes (a lot of) time, motivation, dedication, some luck and (most importantly) a big dictionary filled with curse words

@Chandler HollowayI expect your approach to changing the name using an editor is basically valid (provided you don't change the name length), but notepad is the wrong kind of editor for this type of editing as it cannot handle binary files. So far in my (admittedly very early) investigations I haven't seen any checksums or other tricky things that might cause your approach to fail, so my guess is it should suffice to redo your editing with a file editor that supports editing binary files. Many free ones exist, e.g. see https://www.poftut.com/best-free-hex-editors-windows/ or https://www.slant.co/topics/1208/~best-hex-editors-for-mac @markonis to avoid reinventing the wheel and spending tons of effort on ui stuff, have you see this? https://github.com/eclab/edisyn/ - maybe interesting (or not - i'll leave that up to you )

That's good news. If possible please consider using a cross-platform framework so linux users like myself can benefit from it as well. In the mean time, I've started working on a parser/writer for ac7 files. My current plan, should I succeed to bring it to completion, is to make it available as open source with GPLv3 license on github so perhaps others can use it as a starting point to build e.g a style composer. In the (likely?) absence of "others" I might give it a stab as well, but from where I stand now that would be far in the future. I don't really understand why Casio is so protective of this information - from what I have seen so far, there's nothing in there worthy of special protection (in the sense that it doesn't contain unique features that don't exist in more or less the same form with other makers of keyboards).

@markonis Did you make any progress with this endeavour?

Some time ago I was researching my options, and I found the following two: 1. http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/utilities/usb-host.shtml 2. http://compasflamenco.com/usb-host-midi-p-6.html?language=en I also saw the iConnect things, but wasn't sure it actually would fulfill my needs. (Disclaimer: I ended up just plugging my keyboard into my laptop, so it's not like I have actual experience with these devices).

Are you writing the unofficial reference manual by any chance?

Hi Ted, Thanks for your comments. It seems as if I may have cracked the secret (by accident of course, as it goes with all great discoveries). I'd be grateful, if you happen to have a spare moment, if you could try to confirm that my findings are indeed correct. It seems that the introduction part of the mid big band style is wildly different based on whether you start with minor-type chord versus a major-type chord. My soundcloud recording started with a minor-like chord (Eb7m) whereas my picosong recording started with a major chord (C) causing the completely different introduction. So it seems like this is a feature of this style (as well as a clear violation of the "principle of least astonishment" ) In summary, now I think this actually *is* completely a "problem exists between keyboard and chair problem" and I'm best friends with my wk-7600 again (lol!). Best regards, Stefaan.

Hi tnicoson, First of all, many thanks for the countless hours you seem to spend on this forum, answering each and every question that comes up (or so it seems!) Unfortunately, in this case, I think something else is going on. It's not simply a "problem exists between keyboard and chair" type of thing. Or perhaps it really is, and I will gladly accept more explanation, but please consider my arguments first: "B:001 Slow BigBand" sounds very different on my wk-7600 from the soundcloud or picosong links: After the introductory part the Slow BigBand style consists of something brass with accoustic guitar chords on top. If you listen carefully to the part after the introduction in both the soundcloud and the picosong version, you will hear that there are always some piano chords alternating with some brass chords in both, exactly same way in both recordings, and exactly like it sounds in the Mid Big Band style (and unlike the slow big band style). (I made both recordings myself, btw, so I'm pretty certain I used Mid Big Band style in both recordings. Can I really be so confused as to forget what I did the days before? Maybe ). I own the keyboard for a few weeks only and I haven't explored editing existing or creating new styles yet, so I'm not sure how I would have managed to thin the brass or mute some chords really, let alone add that trumpet with pitch bending effects in the beginning... that's way beyond my current capabilities. What I did do for the soundcloud recording was editing the breathy sax tone which I used to play the melody, by adding some vibrato after a while because that sounded better to me, and to lower the autoaccomp volume to make the sax stand out more. For the rest I'm still a pretty unsophisticated user so far. (As you will have noticed from my previous transposition question, my manual deciphering skills at this point are nothing to bragg about ) This honestly remains a huge mystery to me. And the worst part is, I cannot recreate my soundcloud recording (which I wanted to re-record because it contains an imperfection, but now I have no idea how to recreate it; I must have checked all styles twice by now to find it back, but obviously without success).

Hi forum, This time I'm completely stumped by something that seems to have happened in my WK-7600. The built-in mid big band style appears to have replaced the intro part with something else. I'm not using a user rhythm but the built-in Jazz/European mid big band style. At the beginning of this song you can hear how it used to sound, with some lush brass section playing the intro: And here you can hear what it sounds like now, without that intro brass (Which - to me - is quite a downgrade from what it was). It almost sounds as if part of the outtro is pasted over the intro. http://picosong.com/zzH7 I still hope it's somehow an error on my side although I'm out of inspiration on things to try. I've tried looking in the mixer to see if any parts are switched off or any volumes are set to zero, but I can't find anything. I've also tried resetting the keyboard to factory defaults, but the style remains different. As far as I can tell now, only this style appears to be affected. Any ideas? Best regards, Stefaan.

I made my first jazz song ever! (I've written other styles of music before) Score: https://musescore.com/user/168825/scores/2526641 Recording: http://picosong.com/zswk/ Played on casio wk-7600. - auto-accompaniment using the built-in mid big band style with intro and end (no variation or fill-in used) using fingered3 style - instrument is a breathy tenor sax, which was edited in the tone editor to add some vibrato after a delay - auto-accompaniment volume was turned down significantly to allow the tenor sax to steal the show And yes I played a little mistake somewhere... those things happen

Thank you tnicoson. That works like a charm. It's kind of embarassing how that explanation appears directly next to the explanation about transposition...

Hi all, I'm learning to use my recently acquired wk7600. For a certain song I tried to use auto-accompaniment in combination with the full-range chord method (to have access to all notes on the keyboard). However, because the song features some ultra-low notes, I need to transpose the keyboard an octave down so I can reach those. Unfortunately, this also transposes the auto-accompaniment an octave down which makes it close to unusable (it makes sense to transpose auto-accomp if you only transpose a few semi-tones, but that's a different use case from mine). I've been looking on this forum and in the manual, but so far not much luck. Given the vast number of features this keyboard offers there may be some advanced expert trick that I missed on first reading to still make it possible? So here's the quesiton: Is there a way or a setting to only transpose the played notes but not the auto-accomp? (Or something else that has the same effect, like e.g. a way to only transpose the auto-accomp back up after transposing everything down). One reason why I'd be surprised if it weren't possible: I noticed in the manual that one can choose if alternate tunings should be applied also to autoaccomp, so I'd find it weird if it were possible for an exotic feature like tuning, but not for transposition. Thanks for your insights.