Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

Hi all,

Im a fresh faced nooby, just got my Casio VZ8m yesterday, came with 
a  German manual, which is not much help to me. Any way after proding 
it this evening Ive managed to get it to make a sound. Problem is it 
sounds really shit and isnt transposed across the keyboard ie it 
sounds the same wherever I play. It does respond to pitch bend 
though. I know this little beast works as I tryed it out in the shop 
and ran through a few patches, piano type stuff. It would be really 
great if someone could give me a short tutorial on this thing, just 
so I can a get a patch playing mormally. Ive downloaded the Powerplay 
pdf stuff ( big thankyou to whoever uploaded it :) which looks great, 
but a bit advanced until I can get this thing behaving normally ;)

Any help much appreciated. Oh, is there a windows patch editor out 
there, I downloaded vzpatch but havent tried it yet.

Cheers, Matt

Press Normal for single patch mode

Press total control

Press the filled triangle until you get to 04 MIDI CHANNEL then use the
outline triangle to select a midi channel

Press total control

Press shift to select the 'banks' top right will display INT PST1 PST2

Int is the user bank others are ROM

Try PST1 first so press BANK then a1 then a1 again this should be VZ EP

You can now access 8 sounds by pressing b2 c3 d4 e5 f6 g7 h8

To get the next 8 in PST1 press Bank then B2

That should get you around for a while.

There are loads of 'clever' options so the problem may be the way that
it's been configured.

If the above does not work you can do a factory reset by holding down
the WRITE key while powering on.

As for editors, my advice is get Midi Quest www.squest.com it's what I
use.

Regards
 
Graham

Hi Graham,

thanks for the fast reply. Did a system reset and its working. 
Thankyou so much, I was getting really worried. Strange though as the 
guy at the shop did a system reset when I was there, wasnt paying 
attention obviously. I was looking at the midiquest today, looks 
really good, the vst integration would be a godsend.
Once again thanks Graham, Ill be able to sleep soundly tonight ;)

Matt




--- In CZsynth@yahoogroups.com, "Graham Owen" <graham@a...> wrote:
> Press Normal for single patch mode
> 
> Press total control
> 
> Press the filled triangle until you get to 04 MIDI CHANNEL then use 
the
> outline triangle to select a midi channel
> 
> Press total control
> 
> Press shift to select the 'banks' top right will display INT PST1 
PST2
> 
> Int is the user bank others are ROM
> 
> Try PST1 first so press BANK then a1 then a1 again this should be 
VZ EP
> 
> You can now access 8 sounds by pressing b2 c3 d4 e5 f6 g7 h8
> 
> To get the next 8 in PST1 press Bank then B2
> 
> That should get you around for a while.
> 
> There are loads of 'clever' options so the problem may be the way 
that
> it's been configured.
> 
> If the above does not work you can do a factory reset by holding 
down
> the WRITE key while powering on.
> 
> As for editors, my advice is get Midi Quest www.squest.com it's 
what I

> use.
> 
> Regards
>  
> Graham

> Once again thanks Graham

Glad to be of assistance, the manual is pretty good but to be honest I
think you need an editor, I have patch lists and sysex files to help
control the VZ-8M from within Cakewalk, I noticed the reference to VST
so I guess you use Cubase. You need a sysex file to switch between PST1
and PST2 as there is no bank select and the INT sounds are common when
you address the VZ as two banks of 128 voices. You have to assign voices
in multi mode so I tend to use the VZ for a single sound these days. You
can do some neat trick with the VZ but they are not always obvious.

The VZ-8M has an extended data format when compared to the VZ-1 and
VZ-10M and most editors don't support the extended data which makes
multi mode a pain. You also need to enable sysex and turn protect off
manually whenever you want to edit sounds.

These are some Cakewalk format messages you should just need to strip
the 0x off and put an f0 in front and an f7 at the end to make this work
as raw sysex.

; Multi Mode Sysex
; (sendMIDI 2 0 SYSX 0x44 0x03 0x00 0x70 0x50 0x03)

; Normal mode Sysex 
; (sendMIDI 2 0 SYSX 0x44 0x03 0x00 0x70 0x50 0x00)

; Operation mode Sysex 
; (sendMIDI 2 0 SYSX 0x44 0x03 0x00 0x70 0x50 0x02)

; Preset 1 Sysex
; (sendMIDI 2 0 SYSX 0x44 0x03 0x00 0x70 0x51 0x20) 

; Preset 2 Sysex
; (sendMIDI 2 0 SYSX 0x44 0x03 0x00 0x70 0x51 0x21) 

Regards
 
Graham