Conference napalm::commusic_v1

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It comes with a little toy size keyboard.
                                                                    
It can sample about 4 seconds at 9.2KHz.

It can't save the sample. 

It plays back 4 voice polyphonic. 

It doesn't talk or listen to MIDI. 

It can only hold one sample at a time. 

It's available now from Sam Ash for $89. 

The Sam Ash order desk phone number is (800)472-6274.

Dennis Savage
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	It's not MIDI?  Awww.....

						- karl

Obviously what we need is a MIDI vorsetzer - you roll it up in front of
your arbitrary keyboard and the 88-fingered wonder responds to MIDI commands
by striking the appropriate keys.  I'm only being half-facetious; such
contraptions do exist, driven by piano rolls.  (Does this mean somebody's
goinf to have to write a piano roll to MIDI converter - or worse, build
a thing that reads piano rolls and emits MIDI?)

len.

Len,

	It's already been done.  In the last two Keyboard magazines,
there is an ad offering midi tapes of player piano rolls.  The
ad says 'Last night George Gershwin played on my Casio'.

						- Karl

I love it when reality outruns my imagination!  What I actually had in mind
was a box that you put piano rolls into, with a MIDI output port that you
could plug into a MIDI synth.  What's on the tapes - data for a sequencer?
Alternatively, what reads the tapes and converts them to realtime MIDI
signals?

Incidentally vorsetzers do exist.  The name is derived from the German verb
meaning "to sit in front of", which they literally do - sit in front of a
piano.  I believe Sony makes a cassette driven version; Marantz made a
modification  kit for player pianos that was cassette driven.  I rapidly
lost interest in vorsetzers with the appearance of MIDI.

len.

Ok, but do piano rolls record velocity information ? 8-)

I've often wondered about that.  I had always assumed not, that the holes
in the roll just reflected "note ons" and "note offs" in MIDI terminology,
but the ads for the Sony thing strongly implied dynamics.  Also some
nut/inventor who made a bunch of "recordings" of famous pianists and
composers playing the piano (back during the early part of the century)
including folks like Rachmaninoff using piano roll technology; Book of the
Month Club issued a set of recordings made from these rolls that purport
to sound just like the artist in question, and I don't see how you could do
that without dynamics.  I have the records, and it sure sounds like there's
dynamics.  I suppose you could do it with a different encoding scheme, but
remember, these rolls were made a long time ago.  maybe the dynamics
are just "terrace" dynamics a la the Baroque era, where you make things
louder by playing more voices.

Does anybody have any real facts?

len.

	I don't know how real these facts are, but I do remember 
reading that these piano-rolls of famous composers did include
velocity data.

	All I remember is something about a pool of mercury below
each key, a rod that was driven into it, and some kind of electrical
measurement.

	I'll see if I can find some information about this in my music 
encyclopedia.

						- Karl



p.s. Re; 'when reality surpasses my imagination' -- this happens to
me on a minute by minute basis.

I have obtained the "demo disk" from the company that sells
``piano rolls'' on floppy.  It does not contain velocity
information.  I talked to the company that produces it.  They
said they have a machine that translates piano rolls into a byte
stream. 

In spite of the lack of velocity information and the large time
quantum (39 milliseconds) the thing sounds pretty good.  If you'd
like a demo I gave the disk to Daddy's Junky Music in Nashua.
    John Sauter 

yeah, Duo-Art sounds right;  I'll check the album and see if it says anything
useful.

len.

    Has anyone purchased one of these little things to play with?
    
    I may be interested in getting one to sample my mono analog guitar
    synth if the sample quality is any good.  This would enable me to
    effectively get 4 voice poly out of a mono synth - great for a 
    backround analog string patch or some such track.  The little keyboard
    doesn't bother me if it is used just to bang out chords (I used
    to play an accordian with a smaller keyboard).
    
    Has anyone tried sampling anything with an external mic?  
    Is the sampling quality any good?
    
    Todd.
    
    
    Todd.
    

    I bought one of these things last week at Wurlitzer's in Boston.
    It's really neat, it has external input and mike input as well as
    a built in mike.  You should hear it through a good amp and speakers.
    
    I've sampled my synth, the CD player and lots of friends making
    wierd noises.  The sound is quite usable considering the 9.5k hz
    sampling rate (and the price).  You wouldn't want to use it for
    cymbals or anything, but a polyphonic guitar or synth line is cool;
    it sounds like you ran it through an effect; accurate reproduction
    no, by very usful.
    
    Check out the pre-defined sounds, most are sampled, sound better than user
    samples: piano is great, trumpet, brass section: good, human voices:
    for novelty only.        
    
    It also has a build in poly sequencer: nice, and a toy drum section.
    
    Overall this unit is a thoroughly amazing toy!  It's very close
    to being real.  It really makes you wonder why others charge 
    Twenty times this for a "real" synth when the functionality is 
    so similar.
    
    Fredric      DVINCI::CERTO
    
    
    

    
    As a piece of side information, I called CASIO a few weeks ago to
    get information about this unit and the woman on the phone said
    that I should note that it was not a MIDI unit, but that they were
    planning on coming out with a similar unit with MIDI in the near
    future.
    
    I know nothing else.
    
    (Really!  %^)   )
    
    Rich Goldstein
    

    Echo the comments in .15 - amazing for the price. I got some nice
    results from sampling such things as my Strat (out-of-phase, ala
    Mark Knopfler), a friend's sax and a blues harp. It also allows
    you to modify the ADSR envelope of the sampled sound, and any of
    the pre-set sounds. Further, you can create waveforms from a
    fundamental plus varying levels of harmonics. Herein lies my question,
    which I am sure some of you music theory folks can answer...
    
    I recall from my (scant) knowlege of theory how to create a square
    wave and a sawtooth by combining a fundamental plus various levels
    of selected harmonics. I cannot remember/figure-out how to create
    a triangle wave. Can it be done using ONLY similarly phased sine
    waves (i.e. no COSINES or partial phase shifts) ?
    
    I would be real greatful for any info - I have written a small hack
    Basic program that generates waveforms and displays them via callable
    DECgraph and allows building of waveforms based upon the 'limitations'
    of the Casio unit, but have so far failed to get close to a Triangle
    wave. Ideally I would like to know the algorithm, e.g.
    
    	10 * SIN F  + 5 * SIN 3F + ....
    
    Any ideas??
    
    Tnx 1.0E+6, Jimi.

>A triangle can be made with only odd harmonics, the amplitude is the
>reciprocal of the order.

	Close, Tom, only my book says that for a triangle wave
	the amplitude falls off	as the *square* of the harmonic's 
	order, i.e., The following "C-like" code:

	--------------------------------------
	float x, t, T;
	int i, HarNum;
	
	x = 0.0;
	for(i=0; i<N; i++)
	{
	    HarNum = 2*i - 1;
	    x += 1./(HarNum*HarNum) * cos( (2*pi/T) * HarNum * t);
	}
	--------------------------------------

	This generates one sample of a triangle wave (at time t)
	which contains N odd harmonics. 
	
	Now I have a question for .-2: Please tell me more about this
	"callable DECgraph" ? I have a vt125, and have been looking
	for a way to plot signals without writing my own graphing 
	program. How do you feed it inputs, etc?

						   Scot

    Geez, if the darn thing could just "remember" a sample.  What is the
    point of sampling an instrument (ie Sax, piano) when you can't save
    it beyond power-down.  Might as well put the instrument direct to
    tape, rather than the sample.  The instrument's right there in the
    room anyways.  The main power of sampling is being able to recreate 
    sounds that you as an individual don't have access to on a daily 
    basis.  ...although modifying envelopes can probably be useful for 
    subtle effects.
    
    Maybe the new one will have a tape interface, or is MIDI all it
    takes (IE: can the Mirage save samples to disk via MIDI)?
    
    I don't know what I'm complaining about.  The darn thing can be had 
    for a lousy 80 bucks.  Could end up being an investment if one learns
    enough about sampling to make a good choice on a MIDI one in the future.
    
    Todd.
    

    Couldn't resist.... $89.00 @ Service Merchandise.
    
    Imagine what you could do with a Mirage....
    
                    Sample 88 note "elbow chord"
                    Play it back with one note!
                    Use the polyphonic keyboard and get 704!!
    
    Edd

    There's one in the Natick/Framingham area.
    Also one in Auburn. 
    Many more....
    
    They're alot like weeds.....
                 
    Edd

    More specifically, it's in that nondescript "mall" over by the Natick
    Hilton, across Speen Street from Sears and the balloon bread bakery.
    

    
    CdH
    

Yes, the mall that you can only get to from the Rt.9 Beetleback intersection.
It's a very complex manoeuvre.

Anyway, I'm confused.  What does this Casio sampler give me that the
combination of my Korg SDD-2000 8-second digital delay/sampler and CZ-101
doesn't?  I haven't used the sampler portion of my Korg yet, so don't know
if it records in internal RAM or requires a cartridge or some other interface
for storage.  Likewise with the Casio sampler.  I'm interested in being able
to recall sounds that are stored in an easily retrievable place, playing them
back at any desired pitch.  I would of course save more than one pitch of the
original sound for a more natural scalar progression.  Rack-mount and floor
pedal samplers all seem to require manually changing the rate to change
pitch.  The Korg is MIDI, but I don't understand whether playing a key on
the CASIO automatically selects the right tone of the sampled sound.  The
Casio sampler apparantly does.

I'm willing to spend $90 for this functionality while saving up for an
Ensoniq Mirage (or microcomputer if that turns out to be the better route),
if I don't already have it with the Korg and CZ-101 combination.

This probably seems selfish to pose such a question, but I know most of you
already know the answer at the tip of your tongues and I really hate wasting
time learning technology.  What little spare time I have I prefer investing
in practicing the bass, or occasionally the guitar or one of my other
instruments.


				Mark

    Mark,
    
    	The problem is that the Casio sampler is not MIDI. If you are
    going for a MIDI setup, do not bother (although I have a good time
    whenever I visit Lechmere...)
    
    	- Rick