I've Written A Patch Editor For the CZs and CT6500

[Jokeyman123]

IanB-what factor is involved that your application only runs in Windows 10? I would love to use it-I can install any OS I need-but I've been hesitant to install 10 after all the trouble many seem to have configuring drivers, compatibility with older software-the usual Windows built-in obstacles, and that after several years-windows 7 has been pretty stable (depending on which computer I'm using). I haven't tried installing it in Windows 7 to see if it fails-if its a matter of updating say microsoft C++ redistributable-although I already am running 4.5, I don't think there is any version higher than that in 10. I will go to 10 to run your software-i am running a virtual CZ engine-Tone2's Digits version, and want to continue my programming challenge myself-am curious to see if I can connect your CZ programming app to this virtual engine-I can daisy-chain or direct connect software with Midi-yoke-to see if I can program CZ sounds-and send these to this virtual engine-CZ synths are at ridiculous prices-and considering I already have a houseful of Casio gear and several others......I have the CZ virtual engine working with my keyboards-I need to refresh my memory as to the more complex sounds I was able to achieve with my original CZs-I have about 20 CZ programs designed by another sound designer who ported these for my Alesis Fusion-but are only the simplest original tones I can recall hearing on mine, and your application will enable me to program these more complex tones. Let me know what you think-I'm also aware-the CZ virtual engine may not handshake properly-not due to your software-but due to limitations of the virtual CZ program, although this software synth recieves midi, not sure if it will receive patches other than its own-but I want to try. Could be very interesting! 

[IanB]

@Jokeyman123 The reason it only runs on Windows 10 is that it's a Windows UWP app and they only work on Win 10. I chose that platform because Microsoft were saying it was the future, now they seem to be quietly abandoning UWP for "Progressive Web Apps" -sigh-. At some point I should port my software to the old native Windows platform but it's basically a complete rewrite -double sigh- so a big job.

 

As far as virtual CZ software, it depends purely on whether they respond to Sysex commands the same way as the real keyboards. If they do, it'll work. I haven't tried VZV CZ with a virtual CZ so I honestly don't know if it'll work okay. Could indeed be very interesting!

[Jokeyman123]

No problem-designing and creating software-wonderful you've gotten this far with it, why I want to pusue it. i can port a 10 OS onto one of my machines-Cz software is at least responding to mid keys-not sure re other sysex, why I want to try it. This developer has not described whether this virtual CZ can be controlled much externally-but its worth finding out. I'll post oa few mp3s here of what I have in the Fusion-and maybe some of this software's patches-tell me what you think in terms of how much tese sound like your CT6500-which I remember as wanting quite a bit back when it first came out-it looked special to me even back then, apparently it still is.  Even with all my other Casios, this has "piqued" my renewed interest in the PD sounds. i added a post in another group about getting Behringer to make a CZ clone, but then, there's this, so maybe not. You can read up on this. i will say no more. it's called the Behringer Kirn Cork-Sniffer. I may pass on this one. 

[aububuh]

Hi Ian!  I'm enjoying the app so far, but I'm having a problem using it with my CZ3000.  Something in the app is changing the values of the DCWs.  I first noticed this when saving a patch that I had programmed on the CZ3000 itself; recalling the patch from the sysex file made the sound somewhat brighter than it had been.  I then noticed while using the app that, with the live edit feature turned on, simply touching any of the controls bumped up all of the DCW values by 1-5, seemingly varying based on the starting value.  With the live edit feature off, the glitch happens each time I click both "get live" and "send live" in succession.  I've added some screenshots so you can see the values as changed in one patch each time I hit the two buttons.  I've tried this both with a little M-Audio MIDI to USB interface, and with the MIDI interface in my Behringer UMC 1820.  Any idea what's going on?  I appreciate your work designing and supporting this software!

[IanB]

Aw shoot, looks like I have bugs. Give me a day or two to figure out what the problem is and I'll get an update out ASAP! Is it only the DCW affected?

 

Could you send me some before and after screenshots at support@veezeevee.net ?

 

(Here's a programmer's guess: the Casio parameters map onto integers via floating point formulae, so there's probably an error in my formulae).

 

Thanks for pointing this out Aububuh!

[aububuh]

It's just the DCWs from what I can tell.  It appears to affect both of them equally, and it doesn't seem to matter whether the parameter I click is one of them or anything else.  I'll send you an email!

[IanB]

@aububuh Could you do me a favour? Set a patch up on your CZ3000, do a Get Live on VZVCZ (my software) and see if the value in the software is the same as you set on the CZ. Then do the reverse; set a value on the software, send it to the CZ and see what value the CZ gets. I'm just narrowing down which direction the problem is in.

 

That would help me get an answer quicker.

[aububuh]

Just did the test!  I set a DCW value to 19 on the CZ, hit Get in the software, and both read 19.  I click on the same parameter in the software but do not change it, then hit Send, and the CZ reads 38.  I hit Get again, and now the software reads 38.  Hope this helps!  Sending an email full of screenshots off to you now.

[IanB]

Update released:

 

Version 1.1.8

 

Fixed bug reported by @aububuh causing incorrect DCW values. Values are now sent and received correctly.

[Teslas Children]

I downloaded your app onto my laptop last night after a power surge wiped the internal memory on my CZ 101, and I plugged the CZ in with a brand spanking new midi to usb cable.

 

Basically, I was just looking for a program which would save all of my sound data on a laptop and/or thumb-drive so I don't have to reprogram all of my own sounds by hand (fortunately, I wrote most of my patches down), and your software seems like it's exactly what I needed.

 

But I'm just wondering, is there any limit to how many sounds I can save? Or will it only save as many as will fit into the banks? 

 

Also, do you have some sort of brief tutorial, as I'm just kind of winging it, and I'm a bit thick? Lol! 😝 

 

 

[IanB]

Hi @Teslas Children, It's basically designed so that any Sysex file you create is limited to the number of patches you can save in the CZ's patch banks which means they can be loaded in as a straight sysex file by any software. That is the patch number in the sysex file is the same as it would be on the CZ if you load them all at once. Otherwise I'd need to create some special format for saving and that would be specific to my software and I wanted to avoid that. If that makes any sense. But you can of course save as many banks of patches as you like just by saving to different files.

 

I should do a tutorial, but I did try to write it as "wingable" as possible

 

Any questions, just ask.

[Teslas Children]

Thank you @IanB! 🙂 ... For the most part it's wingable, I'm just not computer software savvy enough to wing my way entirely through a program new to me--even a relatively simple one. 

 

I'm pretty okay once I've learned the basics of a program, but what might take others 10 minutes to figure out (such as your program), could take me days before I see what I missed (which I will kick myself for when I see how obvious and easy it should have been to me). Lol! 😏 ... A short 10 minute YT tutorial for idiots like me would be awesome.  

 

Okay, here are a couple of questions:

 

1) You have six patch banks on the Synth page, but 00 through 01 already has the 16 presets, and 02 through 03 is a duplicate set of 00 through 01. I was wondering if that's because I inadvertantly dumped the presets in twice while I've been figuring things out. (And is it possible to just delete all the sound data in those banks and dump in the four banks from my cartridge?) 

 

2) The other question, sort of related, is that I saved a couple of my data redos to a file on my computer desktop, which are now Number 1 and 2 in bank number 04 on the Synth Page, but bank number 00 on the File page. 🤔

 

3) Also, when I upload one of the sound data files from my desktop to the File page, both of them pop up in bank number 00 on that page, but both under the same name in the box at the top, which is the name of whichever sound I chose to upload first.  

 

• I know I'm just missing something which is probably super-simple... it's kind of embarrassing, tbh.

 

4) Finally, so, are you saying that I can create as many banks of sounds as I want, but am simply limited to only using as many banks as are open on my respective cz synthesizers (I also have a cz-5000) at any given time? That makes perfect sense to me, if I'm interpreting your answer correctly. 

[IanB]

@Teslas Children Okay, I think all this is down to "synchronization" of banks. The CZ series have this issue that from a MIDI perspective a sysex file will always contain the patch number and "banks" are really just groups of patch numbers. So internally, Bank 0 is patches 1-8, Bank 1 is patches 9-16, Bank 2 is Patches 17-24 and so on. (and the "Live" patch is 97 btw). So when we save some group of patches as a Sysex file we unavoidably have to tie them to particular patch numbers on the CZ. The advantage of this is that saved patch groups load back into the same patches/banks, but also it's a bit confusing sometimes.

 

1) On the 101, there are only 16 patch slots (banks 0 and 1) so they're the only ones you can use. The other Banks in VZVCZ are there to read patches from CZs with more memory slots and/or cartridges. So I guess the 101 is sending duplicates, but I don't have a 101 so not sure.

 

2) Um, er, okay, now I'm getting confused. "Synth" always tries to grab the patch as-is on the CZ. VZVCZ always saves its patches as patches 1-16 (bank 0 and 1) in the Sysex file. What is in Number 1 and 2 in Bank00 on the Synth page?

 

3) I can answer this one lol. The name in the box is whatever name you saved the file as, it might be say "Brass Patches.syx" or "Funk Bass Patches.syx" or whatever, so it applies to all 16 patches. The patches themselves don't have names, just numbers. You can't save a patch name in a standard sysex file unfortunately- not my limitation, a limitation of the format.

 

4) What I mean is you can save as many Sysex files (of 16 patches) as you like on your computer until you run out of disk space. One thing you can do is use VZV CZ as a virtual memory for the CZ. Instead of downloading patch banks onto the CZ, if you load a file into it, just selecting the patch on VZVCZ will send that as the Live Patch to the synth. If you want different sounds to send, just load in another file. This includes any files you may get off the internet which are in the same format (this is one reason it works this way for general compatibility).

 

You can also have several copies of VZVCZ running at the same time, set to different MIDI channels and/or MIDI connections, or the same. So you could have a copy with a Strings patchset in, a copy with a Brass patchset in, etc, both set to the CZ5000, and another one controlling the CZ101 with Bass patches in, etc.

 

5) You didn't ask a question 5 but this is a kind of imaginary answer  

If you look on the File tab you'll see "Patch Dump". This either pulls in, or sends, all 16 patches. You'll notice you can set the starting number. So with your 5000, which has more memory slots, you can get, say, the 16 patches starting from patch 17 (bank 2) or send all 16 to them, by setting the starting number.

 

And finally, the 16 patch limit in a file does make sense in that if you were to save a patch dump from your 5000 as patches 1-32, you'd not be able to use that sysex file with a CZ101, because you can't send patches 17-32 to a CZ with only 16 slots. All of this is down to the fact that Sysex files are just raw data- the stream of bytes sent to the synthesizer and there wasn't much finesse on that in the 80s

 

The simplest thing with all this is to just stick with 16 patches in the first 2 banks and consider everything else God's Domain in which thou shall not play 🤯

 

Hope some of this makes some sense!

[Teslas Children]

@IanB Thanks again!

 

Well, that should help me figure out what I'm doing. Lol! 

 

Yeah, the part about only being able to name the bank file, and only have numbers for the individual sounds makes sense to me. That's kind of what I was thinking, but I wasn't sure.

 

As to the banks, on the Synth page, 00 and 01 have the 1-16 CZ presets, which are the same on all models. I think Brass is the first one--I forget which is the second one. But it's the same on the CZ-101 as it is on the cz-5000, anyway.   

 

Banks 02 and 03 on the Synth page of your app are puzzling, because it repeated the presets all again. ... The CZ-101 has 32 onboard patches, including the 16 presets and the 16 Internal programmable patch spaces. I lost the 16 Internals (of my own creation) due to a connection issue with the power cord (I should order a new one), so I thought that at the very least, Bank 02 and 03 on the Synth page of your app would be blank, rather than being a repeat of the 16 Presets. ... So, yeah--definitely confusing.

 

Anyway, I guess the question for me now is simply in overwriting the presets now ensconced in Banks 00-03 on the Synth page.     

 

 

[IanB]

@Teslas ChildrenOkay, didn't know that about the 101. I have the manual but I read it as only 16 rather than 16 programmable + 16 presets which makes sense. A patch can't really be "blank", it has to be *something* so maybe the 101 resets the programmable ones to the presets if it loses its memory.

 

I think

[Teslas Children]

Yeah--it's probably something like that. 

 

Anyway, you've been a lot of help. Cheers! 😊

[pianokeyjoe]

7 hours ago, IanB said:

@Teslas ChildrenOkay, didn't know that about the 101. I have the manual but I read it as only 16 rather than 16 programmable + 16 presets which makes sense. A patch can't really be "blank", it has to be *something* so maybe the 101 resets the programmable ones to the presets if it loses its memory.

 

I think

Technically YES, but in reality, no. The CZ101 has 16 presets in ROM, but the internal sounds which are reprogrammable, end up being all jumbled garbage with the memory wiped. You DO hear something from some of the internal memory locations but it is actually rather easy, to reprogram them. I would say, it is like the DX100/27 from Yamaha. The only difference is Yamaha uses an actual coin battery to back up the memory and Casio CZ101/1000 does NOT. I do not know how many of these Casio keyboards have shown up on ebay as DOA due to the seller not knowing you can restore the internal sounds but hey.. works for me if it helps lower the prices lol! But... as of late not even that helps lol! They want stupid high prices for this thing.

[Teslas Children]

@pianokeyjoe

 

When my CZ-101 glitched once a number of years ago, after losing most of my sound data in the programmables, I ended up with one "happy accident" patch which sounded cool, which I kept and still use occasionally (I reprogrammed all the rest). 

[pianokeyjoe]

1 hour ago, Teslas Children said:

@pianokeyjoe

 

When my CZ-101 glitched once a number of years ago, after losing most of my sound data in the programmables, I ended up with one "happy accident" patch which sounded cool, which I kept and still use occasionally (I reprogrammed all the rest). 

Hmm, that reminds me, It would be nice to have a random patch option on CZ editors, like there seems to be offered in some modern day synths. Even my tiny Midi powered PLOYTEC PL2 and Leukos synths have that option in the editor for those little 8bit chip tune synths. I think CZ random happy accidents would REALLY be popular lol! Just sayin.

[Chas]

Virtual CZ has a parameter/ patch randomizer function:

 

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/4-synth/1158-virtualcz

 

As for the CZ101/ 1000's internal/ user bank, unless power is constantly supplied to the RAM via either batteries or DC power supply, the data is lost when powered off. The era of RAM used in the CZ does not retain data without power, and when power is lost it likely scrambles the values. The reset button underneath a 101/ 1000 is as close to a "factory reset" that you can get with a CZ. The "internal" presets are stored in ROM somewhere on the CZ's main board, and from new or when the reset button is pressed, these are loaded into the internal RAM overwriting any previous data. The ROM obviously never loses its data, but those ROM presets are only accessible when loaded into the internal preset RAM.

 

There's also a quirk from when the internal memory gets scrambled because sometimes the scrambling caused illegal values to be present (numbers that are out of the CZ's allowed range). IIRC, some external programmers can also transfer "illegal" values to generate some weird patches that wouldn't otherwise be possible from the CZ's front panel.

[Chas]

Here's a mention of the "illegal waveform" combinations in a Sound on Sound review of Virtual CZ:

 

"but it provides numerous facilities that the CZs didn’t, and its ability to use the ‘illegal’ waveform combinations makes a whole new range of sounds possible. However, the authors stopped short of recreating the so-called ‘hidden waveforms’ that you can squeeze out of a CZ if you use SysEx to force it to do naughty things."

 

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/oli-larkin-virtual-cz

[Syntherclass]

Renewed interest in my first digital synths, especially my Casio CZ1000, brings me to this interesting forum. 
Allready happy to discover there is this very nice new editor, sincere thanks for the work, IanB! 
 

 
 

[IanB]

And sincere thanks from me for your kind words, @Syntherclass!

[Emerson J]

Hi @IanB

 

I just downloaded your software and I will use it with a Casio CZ3000 I bought from an ex girlfriend for less than 25 dollars around 15 years ago. I don't know much about midi but I purchased a Behringer UMC interface with midi outputs to give new life to the keyboard.

 

Visually the software looks great and the following days I will be using it constantly.

 

Thank you!

[IanB]

@Emerson Jthis is the kind of message I love to read! Thanks so much for posting

 

I have a Behringer UMC and it works fine with my Casio and the software.