KVR Audio

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 2:56 pm

i've created an arp pattern in orion, exported the pattern to midi and imported into z3ta. however, the gate seems to be working per my midi but not the actual notes sent.

i've searched kvr and cakewalk forums to figure out how to add melody lines to an arp pattern.

i would like to have my arp work like the patch "8 bar first contact". however the midi file i've imported (32 steps in length in orion) does not contain any pitch deviations.

i've investigated this in energyxt and it seems orion put a program change message into the midi file. after removing that in ext from event list editor, and re-exporting i still do not have different notes in the z3ta arp, the gate seems to be working but notes aren't.

is there a trick to the z3ta arp to get such a thing to work?

thank you in advance.

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 2:59 pm

I've had problems with custom Midi pattern Arps in Z3ta+ since the last update. It's never worked properly for me and Rene' did not respond to the issue on the Cakewalk forums.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 3:10 pm

hey tek, thanks for your prompt reply man.

so it was working at some point? i read about some kind of conversion program for the older version where you take a mid and convert it to arp format. i wonder if that has anything to do with it.

i'm a little bit nervous to mess with it but.

i spent a good hour or so last night converting all the banks/patches i have for z3ta to use 1.0 quality and 1.0 render quality. i used a hex edit trick to do it but if anyone is interested i can put the default banks up for download. the v1.3 bank in z3ta v1.5.3 did not have the quality setting setup properly and i could not get it to actually set it properly.

it's a real shame to hear that rene hasn't replied. z3ta is a monster of a synth and sounds incredible, i hope he has not abandoned it.

rapture is great, but it's no z3ta. i'm sure especially you can understand what i mean by that.

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:31 pm

Yes in earlier versions of Z3ta there was a small program inside the Arps folder that allowed you to convert a midi file to a .cmp file. The problem was that you could only have 200 arps in the folder at one time and they had to be named arp-001,arp-002 and so on. So if you loaded a soundset from for example Big Tone you had to make sure that the arps that those patches used were the ones in the folder at that time. If you loaded a Kire soundset you had to make sure the arp folder contained the arps his patches used. This made keeping what arp went to what preset a real hassle especially considering the sheer number of presets available for Z3ta. A really crude system in an otherwise brilliantly designed synth. What I asked for many times over the years was the ability to have the arps named and the ability to have more 200 in the folder and any time. So you could have BigTone Arp-001, Kire Arp-001, Pro Sounds Arp-352 etc all in the folder at the same time. Since the .cmp files are only a couple of K each you could have thousands of arps in the folder and use almost no disk space. Then when designing presets you could say "hey I remember Kire arp-048 was pretty cool, I'll use that one for this preset". Instead of "I wonder which arp--048 this one is, whose arps do I have in the folder right now, the Factory Arps, Big Tone Arps or........?".

For some reason either Rene' didn't like this idea or it was too hard to implement. To be honest I don't even remember what solution he came up with I just remember it never worked for me and he never answered requests for help. You've got my curiosity up so I think I'll spend some time today with Z3ta and see if I can remember what the problem was all about. I'll let you know if I have any success.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:41 pm

thanks tek.

i'm also not giving up

i wonder if it's based on channel or octave ranges or something? i wish i could see what was in that 8 bar first contact arp to compare but i cant even get to it. i may do some hacking to see if i can find the arp section in the fxp and reverse engineer it a bit

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:16 pm

Well I'm stumped. I tried import Midi File to Arp and no sound. Must be something in the format of the midi file. It's been so long I can't remember how it's supposed to work. The manual is way out of date, a search at the Cakewalk forum produced nothing, a search at the RGC forum here turned up a thread where Rene' and I were having a "discussion" about the Arp issue....in Feb 2007

I'm going to keep at it, one of those gotta figure this out challenges.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:25 pm

some research has brought some insight:

How to create arpeggio files (.cmp) for z3ta+
---------------------------------------------

1- Create a 1-bar, 4/4 type-0 MIDI file with your arpeggio (check input.mid as sample).
2- Name it 'input.mid' and put it in -same folder- than mid2cmp.exe
3- Run mid2cmp.exe. This will create a file called 'arp000.cmp' in the same folder.
4- Rename it as next available arpeggio slot (ie 'arp052.cmp').
5- Try it in z3ta+. It's not needed to restart z3ta+ to re-test it, just reselect it.

The arpeggio will play:

1- Note On, Note Off
2- Velocity (z3ta+ patch should take care of -what- velocity does).
3- Pitch Bend (z3ta+ patch should set the pitch bend range to required and any extra assignment of it).
4- Polyphonic aftertouch.

mid2cmp will filter all other events in the .mid file (metaevents, aftertouch, controllers, etc.)

Enjoy!
------

that's from readme.txt in the 140dxi version. the last one before cakewalk assimilated rene i think.

so type-0 means all notes on one channel right? i'm pretty sure that's what i had tried.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:29 pm

ah i think there is just a bug tek. if you import the midi file, even though z3ta shows it has switched to it, it has not. if you pick it from the menu again it should work. i was having the same problems with silence after import.

choosing again the midi file from the arp menu worked for me. and the notes are there.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:32 pm

actually scrap that, i had to choose another working arp type like "up" then rechoose midi file.

also when i loaded the midi file the arp was completely reset to non-functional parameters, those needed adjusted as well.

and now it seems the notes are not working either. hrm. back to the gate problem.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:37 pm

dude i think it's type conversion. midi type 1 is what this program reports the export from ext.

http://midconverter.com

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:41 pm

converting to type 0 didn't help anything.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:47 pm

actually i dont think it's working at all. that select one and then the other thing didn't do anything, and further testing proves that it's just using it's last recalled setting.

this bites.

rene never replied? did you try his email or PM?

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:54 pm

Ok it's coming back. I think you're right it's a bug and I think that's what I never got a response from Rene' about. Must be something in the file format. I can get midi files created with Orion and Reaper to trigger once but they don't loop. I tried an FPC midi file that came with FL Studio and it does work,loops and all. It's a drum loop of course and sounds silly but it does work. I'll try the midi converter in your link.

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:57 pm

grymmjack wrote:rene never replied? did you try his email or PM?

You know I don't think I tried his e-mail or PM just the Cakewalk forum. I guess we could give it a try but I don't have a personal e-mail address for him and I don't know if he even visits the RGC forum here anymore let alone checks his PM.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:58 pm

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1273 ... =&#1273919

i've started a new thread, maybe we can get this fixed if we try together?

z3ta+ arp