Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

Tonight was a special night.

Through the miracle that is Craigslist, I bagged a FREE Casio CZ-101 
complete w/ soundcard-to-midi cable.  You cannot argue with free.

This is a unit that has been collecting dust for almost ten years.

There are no batteries in it, but just for the heck of it, I fired it 
up, and much to my surprise/delight, when "Internal" is selected, you 
can summon noises from the thing never intended by the designers- big 
whooshy noisy harshness, which can be greatly modified simply by 
pushing the individual line edit buttons, which reset all the values 
but alter the sound anyhow...it's bizarre.  Shoot, before I messed 
with it, the bend range was set at 99!  (impossible to do from the CZ 
itself...)

Is this something other people's CZ's do, or is there something 
terribly wrong with mine?  It also needs a good cleaning- many of the 
selector buttons stick badly.  At least the keyboard is intact.

At any rate, I had thought of reselling it but it's behaving so 
strangely I may keep it around as a compliment to my CZ-5000.

Tim Hansen

my buttons were sticky like that too. I just carefully dismantled it, put 
all the buttons and rubber button pad thingies in a bowl of water, and 
cleaned each one by one. It takes an hour or so of work, but its worth it to 
get rid of that terribly annoying stick

>From: "Timothy Hansen" <nationwideclyde@...>
>Reply-To: CZsynth@yahoogroups.com
>To: CZsynth@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [CZsynth] On Using a CZ101 in Completely the Wrong Way
>Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 09:15:45 -0000
>
>Tonight was a special night.
>
>Through the miracle that is Craigslist, I bagged a FREE Casio CZ-101
>complete w/ soundcard-to-midi cable.  You cannot argue with free.
>
>This is a unit that has been collecting dust for almost ten years.
>
>There are no batteries in it, but just for the heck of it, I fired it
>up, and much to my surprise/delight, when "Internal" is selected, you
>can summon noises from the thing never intended by the designers- big
>whooshy noisy harshness, which can be greatly modified simply by
>pushing the individual line edit buttons, which reset all the values
>but alter the sound anyhow...it's bizarre.  Shoot, before I messed
>with it, the bend range was set at 99!  (impossible to do from the CZ
>itself...)
>
>Is this something other people's CZ's do, or is there something
>terribly wrong with mine?  It also needs a good cleaning- many of the
>selector buttons stick badly.  At least the keyboard is intact.
>
>At any rate, I had thought of reselling it but it's behaving so
>strangely I may keep it around as a compliment to my CZ-5000.
>
>Tim Hansen
>
>
>

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Congratulations on your lucky find.  I am familiar with the CZ-1000, 
CZ-5000, CZ-1, and VZ-8m.

On any of the CZs, you can (via sysex dump) put numbers into patch 
parameters that are beyond the range avaailable via the front panel.  
(I discovered this in the mid/late '80s when doing custom software 
for the CZ-5000 and the Commodore 64.)

For example, with the CZ-5000 sequencer, you can get shorter notes 
than you can via the user interface.  (I'm not sure if I have my 
documentation from the 1980s.)

It may be that the lack of batteries causes bogus data to be entered 
when you power up the CZ-101.  When you use the user interface to 
scroll down to a value within the acceptable range, the CZ will not 
let you scroll back up beyond the range from the user interface.

Try this:  

1.  Power up the CZ-101
2.  Find a patch (with bogus data) you like.
3.  Save the patch to a computer.
4.  Load the patch into the CZ-5000.
5.  Tell me if it sounds exactly the same as it did on the CZ-101.

If this works, you may have a psuedo-random CZ patch generator on 
your hands!!!!  ;-)

Hope this info helps.

Dr. Steve

PS:  I believe someone posted a method of initializing the patches on 
the CZ-101.  But be careful.  If you do this, you may no longer have 
a bogus patch generator!  ;-)

Hi Tim,

> can summon noises from the thing never intended by the designers- big
> whooshy noisy harshness, which can be greatly modified simply by
> pushing the individual line edit buttons, which reset all the values
> but alter the sound anyhow...it's bizarre.  Shoot, before I messed
> with it, the bend range was set at 99!  (impossible to do from the CZ
> itself...)
> Is this something other people's CZ's do, or is there something
> terribly wrong with mine?

No, that is perfectly normal for any CZ. There are some programs which allow
to save these "overloaded" parameters, among others my own Atari Prog. See
www.matucana.de for download. There is also the page of Sealed
http://homepage.mac.com/synth_seal/html/index.html who researched the depths
of the CZ's hidden parameters.

Hellmuth

the hidden parameters of the cz are a known, and even explored, phenomenon. here
are a couple links:

Message: 4
   Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 22:42:43 +0200
   From: <msg@...>
Subject: Editor TWEAK CZ for Atari ST

Hello everybody,

it is here! The first version of "Twek CZ" for Atari ST: an editor and
librarian,
so far quite simple, for the cz series, including the "hidden parameters"
researched by Sealed (Thanks a lot!).

I do not know if *everything* works ok, and it lacks copy functions, but
it works. I think it is quite self-explanatory. Since the CZ space was full,
I placed it here: http://www.matucana.de/czedit.html. You need the first
two files, the sound file is a test file, containing the CZ-1 presets.

Notes:
- Use only if you have backups of your CZ sounds.
- On other synths as the CZ-1, various memory areas will not be accessible.
- Velocities and line levels work only with the CZ-1.

OK, try and have fun. Feel free to ask your questions.

Hellmuth

http://homepage.mac.com/synth_seal/html/index.html

> There are no batteries in it, but just for the heck of it, I fired it
> up, and much to my surprise/delight, when "Internal" is selected, you
> can summon noises from the thing never intended by the designers- big
> whooshy noisy harshness, which can be greatly modified simply by
> pushing the individual line edit buttons, which reset all the values
> but alter the sound anyhow...it's bizarre.  Shoot, before I messed
> with it, the bend range was set at 99!  (impossible to do from the CZ
> itself...)

wups, hellmuth's link doesn't work anymore. if you really want the prg, i'd
suggest emailing him or ask on the atari-midi yahoo group, as he is a regular
contributor.

shayne

Hi all,

> wups, hellmuth's link doesn't work anymore. if you really want the prg,
i'd
> suggest emailing him or ask on the atari-midi yahoo group, as he is a
regular
> contributor.

I am here ;-), and the program too. I reorganised the web site - a lot of my
pieces are available for download now, photos of my "studio", and the CZ
program resides in the download section now.

Hellmuth