Well, it's here and I'm already playing it. I pretty much remembered how to do everything with it as soon as I turned it on. It is in excellent condition and so far everything seems to work just fine. Everything is laid out well and the access is easy and intuitive. Key feel is good too.

Almost immediately I remembered what I liked and didn't like so much about it, but by far the plusses outweigh the minuses and she's a keeper. The one thing that surprised me is that I liked the ac piano tones better than I had remembered, but then again I never liked them at all on the PA80, so maybe anything is an improvement. The styles may be a weak point, but again, not quite as weak as I had thought.

The organs sound just as I remember them. I love the bread and butter synth patches and the simplicity yet depth of editing power. Nothing fancy, but full and rich for sample based stuff. The alto sax sounds as good as anything I have in soft modules. The only sax patches that sound better to me are the ones on my PLG150-VL Motif ES plug in. AC guitars are not so good, just as I remembered, but the electrics are very decent for KB stuff, especially considering the small amount of wav rom used.

Well, that's it for now. More playing with her is in order for the evening.

AJ

Hey AJ, what about your dislike list ...then and now?

One of my dislikes is editability of sequences with in the instrument...that is to change SMF 's individual instrument volumes and change instruments...I can't recall being able to do so, or do we make changes in the song recorder[I don't remember what it is called , and my MZ is on stage in Wildwood NJ..]..

Fran, even though I have signed off the forum, I lurked today, and I am very grateful that you passed on this MZ when it was up for bid. I have enjoyed talking to you, and I really want to answer you on this.

I understand what you are saying, but I haven't tried editing volumes / instruments from SMF's in the MZ's sequencer. Usually I do this in an external sequencer for my other boards, so I was planning to do the same with the MZ. I know that doesn't help though if you need to do it when your board isn't near a computer. Usually I just tweak right in the mixer if I need to. The mixer and DSP section is so intuitive vs the PA80's. Still, I think the MZ's sequencer has the ability to allow us to edit this stuff.


My issues with the MZ were and still are .. No harmonizer, no pad buttons, and some styles that I don't really like all that much. Of course I already knew all this going in, and really when I play live with my PA80, I rarely used the pads or the vocalizer anyway. I didn't use either all that much on my PSR2000's either, but they are still nice to have, even though I can do a lot of this stuff with my laptop nowadays.

The good news about the styles is that the Roland / Technics to Casio style conversion utility works really well, and the need to tweak is usually minimal, so I can complete conversions much faster and more efficiently as opposed to converting styles for the PA80. A while back I copied all of the converted styles I had for OMB into a new folder, and then changed the extensions on the new batch over to .mid. Since the MZ also has a midifile to style utility built in, it is also very easy to convert these style midfiles over to MZ format, again, with minimal tweaking needed later. The nice thing is that they can be made to sound very good on this board. The other nice thing is that I still had some Roland and Technics conversions from the last time I had my MZ, and I found a bunch more Roland and Technics styles on the net right after I won the ebay bid.

There was one other issue I had in the past with the song sequencer. It only records complete note data internally from what you play, in other words the lead voices you normally play with the right hand, along with the actual data you insert with the left hand, ie. style variation changes, fills, chord changes, start stop, intros etc. When you save as a midifile in the MZ, you cannot play back or edit any note data from the styles in an external sequencer, because there is no note data recorded from them. Although the PA80's song sequencer works in a similar manner, when you save a midifile internally, the actual note data played by the style instruments is also automatically saved. The workaround for the MZ was to play a saved song in it and simultaneously record it into an external sequencer. It will send all the note and cc data that way, but not to it's own internal sequencer. This doesn't bother me much any more since A... I probably will use the MZ primarily as a "gig" board and a controller for my software, and "B", even if I do use it as a scratch pad or to write a complete song, five years later I'm a lot more comfortable interfacing hardware and software than I was then.

I will say that the pattern sequencer works well and although it has more functionality than the others, it is the easiest to use of any of the arrangers I've owned.

I really like the MZ overall and I was sorry I had let it go the first time, but I needed to in order to get my PA80. Five years later, this board doesn't have all the sounds comparable to what I have now, but it still sounds good to me just the same, the keys and pitch / mod wheels feel great, it's easy to work with, well laid out, and something about it just makes me want to play it a lot.


I wish y'all well. It's time for me to take a sabbatical here and refocus on some other things that are going on in my life right now. I'll still be lurking now and then. Peace and happy tunes to all.

AJ


[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 01-21-2006).]

AJ your left the SZ also?

I need to step back Donny. I didn't want to make a lot of noise about it, other than not totally vansishing without saying thanks to some of the folks here that helped me learn some cool things that I might never have otherwise known about arrangers and synths. It isn't totally about the stuff that goes on at the forum, but also my own attitudes in dealing with it. Also I need to focus more on what is going on in my "real life" as well. Nothing catasrophic, just some very "busy" family stuff.

Beyond that, much of what I'm interested in trying to do musically right now doesn't often relate much to arrangers, so I find myself getting into some topics that probably don't really fit well here..

I'm no expert at anything, but with the start I got here, I went from knowing almost nothing about midi to the point where I have been able to learn a good bit, especially about didgtal recording and Vst synth software, and if I can help someone else with it I'm simply an email and if necessary a phone call away. Cheers...

AJ

With AJ leaving the forum that pretty much leaves me twisting in the wind listening to the echoes of my mind.

This is even more worrisome given Rikki's latest acquistion of the SD1 and the significant risk of her abandoning everything in favour of the acoustic accordion....not even midi....who would have thought.

This leaves me sitting on the side roads in dark corners dreaming of the good old days....sad!!! What happened to the future? I guess I too will spend more time lurking vs talking....it is uncomfortable talking to yourself. It will be like this until software based systems become more common I guess.

AJ ....
Take care....good luck in your musical endeavors my freind.......stop in and say hello from tme to time too.

It is sad that the post about an old arranger coming back, has evolved to an old memeber and fellow poster drifting away.

Take care AJ, I have enjoyed your comments, and yours, (and Frank's) help and valuable information on soft synths.

I hope all's well in the family. Come back when you feel you want it.
Bye,
Theodore

P.S. Frank , don't you jump ship now ok?