Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

Hello everyone. I've had this keyboard for 5 years but never had 
anything that would allow me to interface with it until recently. I 
bought it at a pawnshop for $400 Cdn. Everything works on it and it 
has a RC100 ROM card. Both my kids used this keyboard as a starter 
before I made the investment of a baby grand piano. (I promised it 
to my oldest daughter if she made it to grade 8 at the Royal 
Conservatory) Well she now teaches piano! (She has Grade 9 Royal 
Conservatory and is working on grade 10) Since we purchased the real 
piano, our VZ1 is just collecting dust because nobody here knows how 
to program it to sound like a real acoustic piano or anything else 
for that matter. We only get the default sounds out of it. I have a 
SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum midi interface on my PC and the 
required midi cables but don't know what software to use. My system 
is running WindowsXP. Can someone steer me in the right direction on 
how to program this keyboard? What software to use?

Thanks!

>I have a SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum midi interface on my PC and the
>required midi cables but don't know what software to use. My system
>is running WindowsXP. Can someone steer me in the right direction on
>how to program this keyboard? What software to use?

the closest you're going to get to a piano is something that will make you 
say "well, it sort of sounds like a piano."  It isn't really made for 
pianos.  It's made for electronic music programmer nerds (like me) that like 
to spend 3 hours staring at the display and pushing buttons to get the sound 
perfect.  You can download sounds that other people have made but likely 
you're not going to find anything terribly impressive as far as "real 
instrument sounds" go.  If you want to mess with that, there's a program 
here:  http://www.steveandsally.freeserve.co.uk/casio/software.htm

If you just want acoustic sounds, not funny space sounds, you're probably 
not going to like it.  and if you try programming you're probably asking for 
a headache.  The VZ-1 can make a lot of lovely sounds (much better than the 
lousy preset sounds that you've been hearing), but it takes a lot of effort 
to get there, and it's really no good for emulating other instruments.  
probably you should sell it and get something that sounds realistic.

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