ac7 style file renamer: testers wanted

[Chandler Holloway]

@shiihs Sorry that it's been a while since I've dug into testing, but I've noticed some issues with the latest release of the renamer.

 

The first and most simple issue is that the display name text box does not allow you to enter an ampersand (&), even though this is a valid display name character and a helpful abbreviation tool. Casio uses it in their own display names for stuff like "R&B" and "R&R".

 

The second is that specifically with the latest release, any renamed .AC7 rhythm is much quieter when played back on the keyboard itself. I think it's possible that you may have inadvertently been editing some Rhythm part volume levels when you tried to implement the variation swap function. Even when you don't use the variation swap function, the renamed style often has certain parts completely missing or entirely blank variations.

 

I've attached some before and after files that might be helpful for troubleshooting on your end. "Electro Pop Before" with display name "NoNameC" is a raw 4-variation Rhythm exported directly from the X3000 with no changes whatsoever. Electro Pop After with display name "ElectroP" is the same Rhythm after being renamed in ReStyle with no variation swap changes selected in the Variation swap section. Notice that the Normal (var1) pattern is completely blank, whereas the Variation (var2) pattern only has a (much quieter than usual) hi-hat part.

 

"R&B Pop Shuffle Before" with display name "NoNameB" is the raw, unaltered file. "R&B Pop Shuffle After" with display name "RnB Pop " is the renamed file with no variation swaps. This one didn't lose any parts like Electro Pop did, but it is overall much quieter than it should be. It also sounds like some voice assignments were changed during the coversion process; the raw file has a drum part that changes to a different kit with a weird bell tone after being renamed in ReStyle.

 

I've attached a short video demonstrating the playback differences as well. Hope this helps and thanks again for your work so far.

Electro Pop X3000 After.AC7 Electro Pop X3000 Before.AC7 R&B Pop Shuffle X3000 After.AC7 R&B Pop Shuffle X3000 Before.AC7

[shiihs]

@Chandler Holloway Thanks a million for testing. I'm currently fighting with some deadlines for upcoming performances - it's the most wonderful time of the year after all - but when I find more time (hopefully around the beginning of next year) I'll try to address the problems you found. It seems like I've messed up something indeed. Thanks a lot for providing the before and after files, I expect they will be very useful for diagnosing and fixing the problem.

 

 

[shiihs]

@Chandler Holloway I believe I've found and corrected the problem. Could you please retry with the new version? Also... I've had to switch to a new computer as the previous was broken so I hope I didn't mess up something while reinstalling the new pc. Please let me know if you have trouble running the new version. Thanks!

 

I'll just post a link to a windows binary build for now, as I think the linux builds are not very popular, and people using linux probably are not afraid of running from source code directly. (If someone needs it, please shout and I'll provide a binary build for linux as before).

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10ddxz5WB7DA8S8BPi5HR_yM0pN5g-z5B

 

 

[shiihs]

Oh... I didn't make a onefile build this time. You'd need to download the complete "ReStyle" folder (all the files) and put them together in a folder of your choice. 

After the change to a different computer, I kind of forgot how I made these builds before 😞. Was it just single file or a folder of files?

 

 

[Chandler Holloway]

 

On 1/5/2020 at 4:54 PM, shiihs said:

Oh... I didn't make a onefile build this time. You'd need to download the complete "ReStyle" folder (all the files) and put them together in a folder of your choice. 

After the change to a different computer, I kind of forgot how I made these builds before 😞. Was it just single file or a folder of files?

 

 

 

All the builds I've tested were standalone executable files. No folder archives from what I recall.

 

Casio sent over a CT-X5000 recently so I'm fully capable of testing 4 variation files from here on out. I also recently posted a full archive of all the CT-X3000/X5000 preset Rhythms in their original, unaltered forms if you need a library of 4-variation .AC7 files for testing. I never would have been able to get them all renamed and organized without ReStyle, so I just wanted to say thanks again for your continued efforts.

 

I'll try some variation swapping with the new build ASAP and report back.

[shiihs]

5 hours ago, Chandler Holloway said:

I'll try some variation swapping with the new build ASAP and report back.

 

I hope google drive allows for downloading a complete folder at once (as opposed to downloading each file separately, which would take "forever").

Or feel free to let me know if you prefer the one file again. It shouldn't be overly difficult to trace back what I did to make those.

Once we have something that works well enough, I can investigate making a windows installer so people can easily deploy it to their system if they so desire.

 

[Jokeyman123]

shiihs, I'm still interested in what you are doing, although not for the CTX series i think this still applies-to the PX560 and PX350 which read and write .ac7 files, just not with 4 variations. If you can't load all files in Google drive at once-compress into a "zip" archive as one file-I'm sure no-one here will have trouble understanding how to unzip compressed file packages. I think Google drive accepts "zip" files although some antivirus programs falsely read these as viruses or trojans.

[shiihs]

52 minutes ago, Jokeyman123 said:

although not for the CTX series i think this still applies-to the PX560 and PX350 which read and write .ac7 files

 

In an ideal world, it should work for all valid .ac7 files, no matter where they are created or used. Of course it remains to be seen if that is attainable, but so far there haven't been any major showstoppers.

 

[vbdx66]

Hello everyone, I am joining this topic lately. Recently I have been trying to use the CT-X3000 rhythm archive made by Chandler Holloway with my CT-X800 (see this thread:)

All the rhythms from the archive are perfectly readable by the CT-X800, so this is really good news. If you have any CK7 compatible Casio keyboard, I strongly encourage to try these rhythms out on your own keyboard, you might be nicely surprised.

 

To further inquire the matter, I’d now like to try to edit these files in the computer and to swap the order of the variations and the fills.

Could someone please tell me how I could use Restyle to that effect?

 

Please consider that I am nowhere as far as programming is concerned, so I’d need a kind of Dummies Tutorial to tell me 1) how to download and install the software on my old Windows 7 computer and 2) how to operate it to swap the various parts within any CK7 rhythm.

 

Since the CT-X800 “sees” Variation 1 and 2, as well as Fills 1 and 2, what I’ll probably do at first is swap the parts to have the parts in the final rhythm in that order: Intro, Variation 3, Fill 3, Variation 4, Fill 4, Variation 1, Fill 1, Variation 2, Fill 2, Ending.

 

Now, lets put this a bit further still... would it be possible to enable Restyle to swap parts between two different rhythms? This is where the real fun begins IMHO. This would practically be the starting point of a fully-fledged CK7 editor 😎

 

Regards.

[shiihs]

hi @vbdx66, nice to meet you.

 

Excuse me for the slow response. I have a performance coming up (tomorrow) for which I still need to fix some details and I'm generally low on free time at the moment.

 

For installation it should suffice to download the complete folder located at https://drive.google.com/open?id=10ddxz5WB7DA8S8BPi5HR_yM0pN5g-z5B and putting all the files in a folder of your choice. There should be one .exe file inside which you can run to start the tool. No programming required  

 

I think the interface should be more or less self-explaining, but if you run into trouble with installation or running, let me know and I'll try to help you figure things out next week.

 

As for swapping variations between two different rhythms... I'd need to think about the implications of starting to mix up things (if you take a complete variation I don't expect big problems, but if you take only certain instruments e.g., then you have to also check that the number of bars between the two rhythms is compatible etc...).

 

My ultimate dream is indeed to have a full-fledged ac7 editor which allows editing "everything", but outside holidays it's difficult to find enough time to dedicate to the project. Also the complete lack of documentation about the file format is not exactly helping me to achieve that goal faster . But I haven't forgotten about the project yet.

 

[Chandler Holloway]

No worries man, please take your time. I’ve been absolutely buried over here so I haven’t been able to test the variation swapping yet. I promise I will set aside some time tonight and test the latest build on my CT-X5000. If all goes well, @vbdx66 should be able to use my archive and ReStyle to create the 1-2 and 3-4 Rhythms she’s looking for.

[vbdx66]

Hi @shiihs and thanks for helping. I am pretty occupied myself for the time being but the installation procedure as you explain it seems pretty straightforward so I will try to install the program tonight (Paris time) or tomorrow. I’ll tell you in the next few days if I am able to run and to use the program. Your project looks very promising for Casio home keyboard users.

 

@Chandler Holloway thanks for your help. I am very keen on testing the swapping feature of Restyle if someone explains me how to do it properly to avoid mistakes. 🤗

 

What I am proposing to do is to try the swapping feature on the 10 or so rhtyhms of the CT-X700/800 I like best. I will firstly swap variations 1 and 2 with variations 3 and 4 (same thing for the fills), then compare the internal version of the rhythms with the rhythms from the archive to hear which variations are not present on the CT-X800. I will then do a final swapping job to have as variations no 1 and 2 the variations which are missing in the original rhythms. For instance, lets say that variation 1 and 2 on the CT-X800 are variations 1 and 3 of the equivalent rhythm from the CT-X3000 archive, I would produce a version of the rhytm with variations 2 and 4 of the CT-X3000 swapped in position 1 and 2 of the final file.

In that fashion, I will have all 4 fills and variations of a rhythm accessible through two registration slots, one pointing to the original rhytm and the other pointing to the CT-X3000 swapped version with the « missing » fills and variations.

To be really consistent, I think it would be best, in the registration slot pointing to the user rhythm with the swapped variations, to copy the One Touch Settings which go together with the original, internal rhytm.

 

By the way, the idea to rename the rhythms as a workaround to give labels to the registration memory slots is simply brilliant. The only issue is that on the CT-X700/800, this will be very limited since there is only room for 10 user rhythms at a time. So it would be better to shave a RegMemBank file with banks 1 to 8 each containing the alternate versions of two different rhythms (with variations 1 and 2 visible, then 3 and 4 visible) in the same category of rhythms, for instance Dance or Jazz or whatever. Each of these RegMemeBank file would have to be uploaded to the keyboard together with the corresponding set of 8 user rhythms (corresponding to 8 chosen internal rhythms in that category, but with the alternate variations).

Naturally, it will be much more convenient on the CT-X3000 and CT-X5000, with respectively 50 a d 100 slots for user rhythms, this would give greater flexibility for this labelling process.

 

N.B.: English is not my mother language, so I hope that my explanations are not too confused for British or American ears.. 🙃

[Chandler Holloway]

1 hour ago, vbdx66 said:

By the way, the idea to rename the rhythms as a workaround to give labels to the registration memory slots is simply brilliant. The only issue is that on the CT-X700/800, this will be very limited since there is only room for 10 user rhythms at a time. So it would be better to shave a RegMemBank file with banks 1 to 8 each containing the alternate versions of two different rhythms (with variations 1 and 2 visible, then 3 and 4 visible) in the same category of rhythms, for instance Dance or Jazz or whatever. Each of these RegMemeBank file would have to be uploaded to the keyboard together with the corresponding set of 8 user rhythms (corresponding to 8 chosen internal rhythms in that category, but with the alternate variations).

 

Thanks. I would say the best way to work around the ten Rhythm limit would be to load in a .DAL (All Data) file. This is an all-in-one archive that contains every type of User Data in keyboard memory (User Songs, User Recordings, User Registrations, User Settings, etc) in one back-up file. You would set up your Registrations and custom named Rhythms however you like until you run out of User Rhythm slots, then save the .DAL archive to preserve all ten of those named regs for easy recall later. That way you don't have to worry about making sure the Registrations all point to the correct spots in the User Rhythm category, as you'll be loading in new Registration banks and User Rhythms at the same time (and those Registrations will already call up the correct Rhythms and other settings).

 

I would make sure to organize these .DAL files with Registrations that are commonly used together to avoid having to back out to the Media menu too often. If you're playing a gig and you know the set list beforehand, structure your .DAL files such that you only have to interrupt the show while a new archive loads in once or twice. You can keep your .DAL files smaller (and thus faster to load) by deleting unused User Songs and User Recordings off of the keyboard before you create the archive.

 

Another easy way to maximize the use of your User Rhythm labels is to organize Registration Banks such that Registrations used for the same song are all contained in the same bank, and that the first Reg in that bank will be used for the first part of that song. That way, you only really have to label the first Registration in each bank of 4. For example, if Reg 3-1 is named "Song A", you'll know that Regs 3-2, 3-3, and 3-4 are all meant to be used with Song A. You'll still have to remember which parts of Song A correspond to these other three Regs, but that's not nearly as complicated as having to keep track of 32 totally unnamed Registrations. There's also only 8 Reg banks even though you can have up to 10 User Rhythms to use for Registration naming, so you can use the extra two Rhythm slots wherever you might find them the most useful (for example, organizing Song B and Song C within the same Reg bank because they each only use two different set-ups throughout the song).

 

Again, maximizing the utility of the limited Rhythm slots for Registration naming requires you to really know the structure of your songs and the set list for the gig you're playing, so all these considerations are best left towards the end of the songwriting process.

 

Still haven't had a chance to test, I'll report back later.

[Chandler Holloway]

@shiihs

 

Ok, so I tested it with the Electro Pop Rhythm again and got some interesting results. I tried a simple swap of Variations 1 and 2 with Variations 3 and 4. I have attached a screenshot of the exact swap settings I used to generate the new file, just in case I messed anything up with the configurations.

 

The good news is that the problems with program change and volume settings are no longer present, so the swapped Rhythm sounds exactly like the source Rhythm instrumentation-wise. Variation 3 and Fill-In 3 are correctly swapped into the Normal/Fill-In1 slots, but Variation 4 and Fill-In 4 didn't copy over to Var2/Fill2 properly. Fill-In 4 ended up in the Variation 2 slot (as a one measure long repeating fill), and Fill-In 2 is just 4 measures of blank space. I don't know how you were able to make a Fill longer than one measure (all Fills are hard capped at one measure long, even back in the .CKF format days), but I imagine that Variation 4 (four measures long) somehow got copied over Fill-In 2. This would explain why Fill-In 2 somehow got to be four measures long, and the fact that it's silent and empty for those four measures is probably a failsafe error due to you exceeding the measure limit for a fill-in.

 

Just to confirm this, I tried a second test where I swapped Var 1 and Fill-In 2 in the ordering settings just to see if it would work. I have also attached a screenshot of these settings and the output file for your reference. Fill-In 2 is now in the correct spot, but Var1 is still blank during playback. So now I don't know what to think. Maybe we can make a fill-in longer than one measure. That's wacky stuff.

 

With regards to UI feedback, I think the way you have the drop down menus ordered and organized is a bit confusing and could use some tweaks.

 

For starters, I think it would be better to change "Normal" to "Normal (1)" so 4-variation users will know you're talking about Variation 1. You should also change "Var 1" to "Variation (2)" or "Var (2)". As it is, it's a bit confusing to have Variation 2 labeled as Variation 1, and also to have Variations 1, 3 and 4 but no Variation 2. The parenthetical (1) and (2) are a good compromise that should make it a bit clearer for both 2 and 4 variation Casio users. Plus, you avoid the potential confusion of having Fill-In 2 match up with Var 1 like it is in the current build.

 

For the first part of the "ordering" row, you have Normal | Var 1 | Fill-In 1 | Fill-In 2, but towards the end, you switch it up with Var 3 | Fill-In 3 | Var 4 | Fill-In 4. I think you should switch the first part to be Normal (1) | Fill-In 1 | Var (2) | Fill-In 2 for the sake of consistency..

 

I have attached the Before and After files for your inspection, just like before. I also compiled all the contents of the ReStyle Google Drive archive into one zip file for the sake of convenience (hopefully shiihs doesn't mind), which @vbdx66 and @Jokeyman123 might find helpful for testing. Simply create a ReStyle folder somewhere on your computer, extract all of the contents of this zip folder into that folder you just created, and then run the ReStyle.exe executable inside that folder. 

 

I would recommend going back to the all-in-one executable for future releases if it's not too much trouble. A good chunk of Casio users aren't very tech savvy, so the simpler it can be, the better. 

 

Again, great work! Looks like there's only a few little bugs to iron out before the variation swapping is good to go. It's going to make my life so much easier when it comes time to fill out the rest of the archive.

 

Test 1 Settings:

 

 

Test 2 Settings:

Electro Pop Test 2 After.AC7 Electro Pop Test 1 After.AC7 Electro Pop Test Before.AC7

ReStyle Build 01052020.zip

[vbdx66]

Hi @Chandler Holloway it seems we were looking at this at the same time.

On my Windows 7 computer, Chrome automatically downloaded the whole folder as a ZIP file so it was very easy to dezip it again and to create a Restyle folder in the Program Files (x86) folder and to launch the Restyle EXE file.

I came to the same conclusion as you as regards the order and the naming of parts. It would certainly be more consistent to have the parts appearing in this order and with this labelling (or anything similar):

Intro 1, Variation 1, Fill 1, Variation 2, Fill 2, Ending 1, Intro 2, Variation 3, Fill 3, Variation 4, Fill 4, Ending 2.

By the way, this swapping business could also allow the one Intro, one Ending keyboards to access Intro 2 and Ending 2 when they exist (and if they have the same length)

The idea of a 4-measures Fill is interesting indeed. 

I will try to further investigate the matter during the weekend and test some swapped rhythms in real life on the CT-X800 (I cannot do this right now because my computer is located in my office and the CT-X in our living-room at the other end of the house, besides it is very late here).

[shiihs]

@Chandler Holloway

Sorry for my very late response. I've had some unexpected delays caused by "real life".

Since I don't have an instrument with so many variations unfortunately I cannot test it myself so I have to rely on your description of what happens.

 

Do  I understand correctly from your analysis that my guess of what constitutes variation 4 and fill 4 needs to be swapped?

If so, that should be a very easy fix.

If not, I need to reread what you wrote in more detail

 

Next time I will make a single-file build again.

 

Also thanks for the UI feedback. The order in which the variations and fill-ins are listed in the UI currently conforms to the order in which they are present in the ac7 file (this made some things easier in the program). There's no strict need for that though. I'll try making it a bit less confusing.

 

Thanks again for taking your time to test out the tool.

 

[shiihs]

For the adventurous among you, here's a new version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Sn6RDgWCYJFPYm-zF_zH0jKlRIr-AuFN

 

[vbdx66]

Hi @shiihscould you please elaborate and explain how this version differs from the preceding ones and how to use it? As you know, I simply want to switch variations 1 and 2 with variations 3 and 4 (same for the corresponding fills) so as to access the variations that are usually unseen by the CT-X700/800. There are 10 CT-X rhythms or so for which I need all 4 variations and fills to build tension in the music.

 

I am eager to try out this new version as soon as I k ow how to Install and how to use it. Is it a self-installing file or an archive?

 

Regards.

[shiihs]

hi @vbdx66

 

I've incorporated the feedback you and @Chandler Holloway gave wrt to the naming and ordering of elements in the UI. 

I've also swapped the meaning of var 4 and fill-in 4 which hopefully makes using those while reordering behave as expected

(unfortunately I have no way to test variations 3 and 4 myself, so I 'm relying on both your feedbacks to find out what is wrong.)

 

The link points to a single executable file which you can start from where you save it.

 

[vbdx66]

Thanks @shiihs 😎

 

It is Saturday evening here. I am not sure to have the time to test your software properly this evening but tomorrow it is Sunday so hopefully I will have some spare time to test it and I will report about the results here.

 

[Off topic: I see that you are located in Belgium. I am Belgian myself from Nivelles but I have been living near Perpignan in the South of France for the last 15 years. May I ask where you’re from in Belgium?]

 

A nice weekend to all 😊

[shiihs]

2 hours ago, vbdx66 said:

Thanks @shiihs 😎

 

It is Saturday evening here. I am not sure to have the time to test your software properly this evening but tomorrow it is Sunday so hopefully I will have some spare time to test it and I will report about the results here.

 

[Off topic: I see that you are located in Belgium. I am Belgian myself from Nivelles but I have been living near Perpignan in the South of France for the last 15 years. May I ask where you’re from in Belgium?]

 

A nice weekend to all 😊

 

I'm currently located in "Vlaams-Brabant" (about 30km from Leuven) but I spent all of my youth in "West-Vlaanderen".

Don't worry about test timing: as you have noticed this is a somewhat slow moving project  (but the important thing is it doesn't stall, at least until it's usable).

 

[Chandler Holloway]

@shiihs Glad to hear about the new update. Good to have it back in one single file, and I like the new UI. The element naming and ordering is much clearer now, and I only have two suggestions.

 

1) The placement of the intros and endings is weird. I think it would be better to have Intro 1 and Intro 2 as the first items in the "current ordering" row, and Ending 1 and 2 as the last options, with all the variations and fill-ins in order through the middle. So the ideal default order would look like this:

 

2) The order of the items in the drop down menu doesn't match the default order of the boxes on the UI. If you're going to update the UI to match my above suggestion, consider updating the order of the items in the drop down menu so the two match. Again, a very minor problem, but it would just make a little more sense.

 

As far as the variation swapping, it's getting better, but I'm still running into some translation errors in testing. I used ElectroPop as my test Rhythm again, with the end goal being to swap variations/fills 1 and 2 with var/fills 3 and 4. Here are the exact settings I used within ReStyle to create the "ReStSwap" test rhythm.

 

From what I could tell, old Variation 3 and Fill-In 3 copied over to the new Variation 1 and Fill-In 1 just fine. However, the new Variation 2 is now blank. The new Fill-In 2 sounds correct (i.e. Fill-In 4 was copied over correctly).

 

The new Variation 3 did not change, which means that the old Variation 1 did not copy over correctly. The old Fill-In 1 seems to be in the new Fill-In 3 spot, so that did copy over correctly. The new Variation 4 sounds like the old Variation 1, and the new Fill-In 4 seems to have changed to the old Fill-In 2.

 

This is all very confusing to explain over text, so I have attached short video clips that should hopefully help clear things up. The first is the original preset "ElectroP" Rhythm and all of its fills just for the sake of reference. The second demonstrates the "ManlSwap" (Manual Swap) Rhythm, which I created on the CT-X5000 itself using the front panel controls. It shows how the Rhythm sounds if Var 3 and 4 are properly swapped with 1 and 2. The last clip shows the "ReStSwap" (ReStyle Swap) Rhythm and the translation errors I explained above. Just watch the rhythm controller section of the display so you can see which variation/fill is currently playing.

 

I have also included all three of these files in .AC7 format so you can inspect them and see what went wrong (or right, in the case of the Manual Swap file).

 

Keep up the great work! In other news, a store near me recently acquired an MZ-X500 and they have it out for display. I'm going to see if I can come by and export all of the onboard Rhythms to a flash drive for the archive; hopefully nobody buys it by the time I can get back there. If I can manage to export them all, we'll have access to every official 4-variation Casio Rhythm ever released here on the forums. Fortunately the MZ-X has a touch screen, so exporting every Rhythm by hand should be much quicker and simpler than it was on the CT-X models. Wish me luck!

Electro Pop Manual Swap.AC7 Electro Pop ReStyle Swap.AC7 Electro Pop Test Before.AC7

[shiihs]

On 3/10/2020 at 3:27 AM, Chandler Holloway said:

Wish me luck!0

 

@Chandler Holloway Good luck  

 

I'm trying to make sense of your observations but t's not trivial. One potentially relevant difference that I see between manually swapped and restyle swapped variations is in a binary section which I really don't understand (but as it starts with the characters "PP", and based on browsing the CT-X5000 manual, my guess is it refers to phrase pad data - something that didn't exist yet in the time of the WK7600 model, and so impossible for me to systematically investigate).

 

Having said this, every combination where you had trouble after swapping shows a difference in this phrase pad section between the manually swapped and restyle-swapped files.

 

In particular, after swapping Var(2)->Var(4), the PP section is suddenly followed by all 0's, and you describe how Var(2) after the swap suddenly sounds blank.

In a naive first wild guess, I wonder if these numbers could be some kind of mixer settings. Could you check with the restyle swapped version if there's s mixer volume or related setting somewhere (perhaps something phrase pad specific?) which has been turned to 0 by the swap and which can be re-enabled to hear the correct variation?

 

If so, at least we have a new lead of where to search further.

[Chandler Holloway]

On 3/15/2020 at 4:34 PM, shiihs said:

 

@Chandler Holloway 

 

I'm trying to make sense of your observations but t's not trivial. One potentially relevant difference that I see between manually swapped and restyle swapped variations is in a binary section which I really don't understand (but as it starts with the characters "PP", and based on browsing the CT-X5000 manual, my guess is it refers to phrase pad data - something that didn't exist yet in the time of the WK7600 model, and so impossible for me to systematically investigate).

 

Having said this, every combination where you had trouble after swapping shows a difference in this phrase pad section between the manually swapped and restyle-swapped files.

 

In particular, after swapping Var(2)->Var(4), the PP section is suddenly followed by all 0's, and you describe how Var(2) after the swap suddenly sounds blank.

In a naive first wild guess, I wonder if these numbers could be some kind of mixer settings. Could you check with the restyle swapped version if there's s mixer volume or related setting somewhere (perhaps something phrase pad specific?) which has been turned to 0 by the swap and which can be re-enabled to hear the correct variation?

 

If so, at least we have a new lead of where to search further.

 

@shiihs

Sorry for the delayed response, I totally missed this notification back in March.

 

I doubt it has anything to do with the phrase pads. They're quite separate from the Rhythm controls, with the only possible link being the ability to "chord sync" your phrases to follow along with your accompaniment chords. They also have an entirely separate section in the Mixer menu, so I don't know why phrase pad settings would result in wonky voice assignments for the Rhythms.

 

Even so, doesn't hurt to investigate. My first round of Electro Pop test Rhythms (we'll call these V1) were all exported and edited with the preset Phrase Set 1 selected. For the second round of tests (we'll call these V2), I cleared out Phrase Set 1 completely (deleted all phrase data) and set all the Phrase Pad settings (chord sync, Loop, break point, Timing sync) to their default values (off, or 1). Let me know if you find anything different with this batch. Here are the settings I used in ReStyle:

 

Everything sounds the same as the first batch, so the videos from my last post are still accurate if you need a reference. V2 is still completely blank. The mixer settings don't indicate anything has been muted (all parts are set to on, and the volume levels are 100). Upon further examination, every single Rhythm track in V2 of the ReStyle swap test has reverted to the default voice assignments. When you first start editing a new User Rhythm on the CT-X5000, the tracks all have default voice assignments to match the "suggested" track names in the Editor. For example, the Perc and Drum channels both default to Standard Kit 1, the Bass channel defaults to GM Finger Bass, the Chord 1 channel defaults to GM Piano 1, and so on.

 

The ReStyle swapped V2 has all these voice assignments at the default volume level (100). This leads me to believe that ReStyle is clearing out V2, or otherwise pasting something empty from the source Rhythm over V2 during the conversion process. To illustrate this and help you with your own examination of the test files, I have transcribed all the mixer settings for all three test files (original, Manual Swap, ReStyle Swap) and attached them to this post as searchable tables in a Word document (hopefully it's convenient and readable). I have listed out each instrument along with the corresponding Program Change (PC) and bank select (BS) values from the appendix, as well as the volume levels for these particular tracks. This should help you keep track of where ReStyle is shuffling the Elements of the source rhythm during the variation swap process.

 

Notice that on the Chord 5 part, AKA Track 8, the ReStyle swap variant has the default voice assignment (GM Brass), which is strange because this particular voice assignment does not appear anywhere else in the source Rhythm. Thus, some part of ReStyle must be clearing out V2 or overwriting it with blank or invalid Element data during the variation swap process.

 

Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you out with further tests.

Electro Pop Manual Swap V2.AC7 Electro Pop Original V2.AC7 Electro Pop ReStyle Swap V2.AC7 Rhythm Mixer ElectroP Manual Swap.docx Rhythm Mixer ElectroP Original.docx Rhythm Mixer ElectroP ReStyle Swap.docx

[Chandler Holloway]

@shiihs

 

Hope you’re doing well. Any updates on your ReStyle investigations? Please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like me to provide for testing purposes or if you’d like me to clarify my previous reports regarding the variation swap errors.

 

In unrelated news, I recently found out that there is another layer of complexity in the .AC7 we haven’t considered up until this point: “Fixed” Rhythm data for a factory preset Rhythm. Please reference the discussion in this topic, specifically Brad’s explanation of enhanced Rhythm data in the preset Rhythms at the end of page 3.

https://www.casiomusicforums.com/index.php?/topic/18562-will-we-see-an-update-for-ctx-before-the-year-ends/&do=findComment&comment=61577

 

Perhaps this mysterious “PP” section contains the instructions for these enhanced Rhythm features? The fact that the PP section was entirely blanked out for Variation 2 would make sense, as the ReStyle swapped version of the Rhythm deleted all the content in Variation 2 and reverted the voice assignments back to their default settings.

 

If this PP section does contain these enhanced Rhythm instructions that only exist for factory preset Rhythms, then it stands to reason that the PP section would be blank or entirely for an .AC7 Rhythm that was created from scratch by an end user. Fortunately we have a wealth of 4-variation User Rhythms to choose from over in the Downloads section of this forum. I have some examples below if you’d like to inspect them for testing.

 

The fact that these “Fixed” preset Rhythms cannot have their data edited by the end user outside of changing the voice assignments and mixer settings brings up another valuable feature you could add to ReStyle to make it even more useful for Casio owners. Namely, altering preset .AC7 files such that the keyboard will not recognize them as fixed data and allow users to fully edit them as if they were any other custom User Rhythm.

 

This may lead to some unintended effects on Rhythm playback, but removing this “DRM” from preset Rhythms is certainly an interesting thought and worth investigating. If this feature does pan out, however, I would definitely update my Rhythm archive to include the editable versions of these preset Rhythms for added versatility. Fortunately I already have the raw files exported and archived, so I can just run them through ReStyle again to remove the copy protection without having to worry about the (very time consuming) exporting process.