I have checked the O/S on my 7000 and it is only 1.3. I wonder if that may be part of the cause of my problems in other topics. I have downloaded O/S 1.4 which is the forerunner of 1.6 which I presume is the current version. Unfortunately my German is limited to jah und nein which aint a lot of help in reading the installation instructions. Does anyone know from where an English translation is available?

Regards,

Trevor

Trevor, I very much doubt if your older version of the OS is causing any of your reported problems. Your problem with transferring Bernie's styles is not related to the KN7000 OS.
I still have version 1.3 on both my KN7000 - as have many other owners - and have not experienced any problems. The changes effected by the upgrades are only minor corrections.

Hello trevorjohn,

according to constellation it could be better to instal the last version 1.4 and 1.6.
It is anyway no disadvantage!

I have described the difference to the version 1.3 in another forum.
http://www.kn7000.net/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=492

There is, I believe no translation into English. If you needed help for the installation, I could help for you. Indeed, my English does not especially feel well.

Greeting
HarryG

Thanks for the input.. I will leave well alone.
Regards,
Trevor

Hiya Bill
I feel another training seminar coming on...sometime later this year, don't you...
Rog

Not a bad idea Rog

Hello Trevor,

Firstly, I tried to reply to your email using the information you gave, but it was returned by my server as not being recognised. I am wondering whether something has been left out - a 'dot' perhaps. Can you send it again please?

Secondly, I've just checked my KN7 and it too is a 1.3 version and, I have to say, I've still not been able to load Bernie's styles either. In fact, Bernie's, Arild's and Bill's have all appeared on my desktop and the SD card shows them, but when I load the SD to the KN, I get the message the card is empty. I have tried every way I can think of to get them to load and put it down to the fact that I'm still using my troublesome PC but, now that you've mentioned the version, I am wondering whether that has anything to do with it.

Having said all that, from what I can see of them, I am not too worried because I have most of them anyway (from various sources) so if and when you visit, you can look at my cards.

Audrey

I have owned three different Kn7000 and I try to live by -- "If it's not broke don't fix it".
In short if I am getting what I want what am I fixing? My short memory tells me that some were having problems after updating the O/S, nothing more.

There is very little out there that can effect the O/S of the Kn7, it has been set up beautifully so go with caution.

John C.

Hello,

many colleagues from the German Technics forum have written about similar problems with the KN 7000. After the installation of 1.4 and 1.6 these problems would have been repaired.

Why has Technics published the version 1.4 and 1.6?

Probably because they are an improvement to 1.3.

I myself have installed 1.4 and 1.6 and no problems with to the KN 7000.

On my SD Card ( 1 GB) I have two systems:

1. 99 folders of the normal operating system
2. 240 folders from the SP 7001 plug-in

With the key "Favorites" I can switch over between the system.

I need the normal operating system, so that I can insert the marks ( Sheets) as pictures.

Greeting

HarryG

Both of my 7000's were upgraded from 1.3 to 1.4 and finally to V1.6, without any problems. I used the disks provided by Technics USA for the V1.6 upgrade. It was a very simple task from my perspective. I believe Alec wrote a procedure for the upgrade in his KN7000 book. Technics also provided a procedure with the disks they sent to me. So I have that procedure in English somewhere around here.

BUT, knowing how much trouble some folks are having trying to do a "SD restore" of Bernie's styles from Bill's web site I would hesitate to suggest that the upgrade be tried by anyone who does not feel totally confident that they can do the job.

I have to say I agree with Bruno "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" which I think is why I didn't upgrade when these were available to us.

It doesn't help with loading Bernie's styles though. I can't even get Bill Norrie's styles to work either despite following his 'plain English' and very explicit instructions. It is puzzling to say the least. If anyone comes up with a solution, please post the answer on this site.

Audrey

I don't know about an answer Audrey but I have found something which I don't understand. I have got the styles onto a 1G SD card exactly as instructed but again as soon as I pressed the custom style load button up came the same old message "The file you are trying to load is empty." After tearing out one or two of the remaining hairs, in desperation I pressed the Load button on the right hand side and all the styles miraculously appeared. They
could then be loaded one at a time but ONLY into memory not custom styles. The next one in knocked the previous one out. I'm sure that is definitely not right. How can one button say the file is empty and the other say it aint!!?

Obviously I only need to load those styles that I want to use and put them in the Custom styles folder but the directions in the manual do not work. The most infuriating part is that I know I did perform this operation on my earlier KN7000 but I can't remember how, other than according to the manual.

Somebody HELP!!!!

Regards,

Trevor

Audrey, one possible way to find out what is going wrong, is for you to write down the procedure step by step that you are using as though you were trying to teach someone else how to restore Bernie's styles to a blank SD card. Then one of us could probably see the problem and offer help.

I am beginning to think that it may be helpful for some of us to resurrect the old Skype phone call process for these kinds of issues.

Trevor, I haven’t used Custom Styles since I discovered the speed of using SD cards. You can load a style from SD almost as fast as deciding what Custom memory that you want to use. Even faster if you use the SD Favorites option. When you load or save Custom styles to Custom memory, you are also loading or saving a few panel memories and other stuff. Can’t remember all the details. When you load or save with the SD card, you get a complete keyboard setup with 24 panel memories, complete sound files, etc. I don’t see any advantage in using Custom Memory.

But, that doesn’t answer your question . . . If the keyboard is saying that the file is empty, it is because you have entered a location at the FROM side of the display that does not contain a custom style file. ( see page 134 of your manual for floppy disk or page 150 for SD card )

Thanks Bob. All taken on board and will experiment

Cheers,

Trevor

Trevor, I think you are getting confused

If you can see all Bernie's styles when you press the Yellow 'SD Load' button, then that is exactly what you should see and the styles have been correctly transferred to the SD Card!! They will not be present in the CUSTOM memory, until you deliberately transfer some of them to the 20 CUSTOM Memory locations.
The 'new' styles, on the SD Card will always be loaded one at a time to the KN7000 COMPOSER memory, and you can then use the style just as if you had selected one of the built-in styles. The COMPOSER memory is accessed by pressing the 'MEMORY' button to the Right of the CUSTOM button. This is a totally different memory to the CUSTOM memory. All of Bernie's styles are in COMPOSER format - NOT CUSTOM format - which is quite different.

Depending on how the COMPOSER was structured during the original 'Save' process, there may be up to three different styles within the COMPOSER. These are referred to as Memory Banks 'A' , 'B' and 'C' and having loaded from the SD Card, you can then select any one of the three styles, by pressing the 'MEMORY' button, next to the COMPOSER button and selecting A, B, or C. Some of Bernie's styles just use COMPOSER bank 'A' but others use all three banks. These three Banks can hold either three totally different style patterns or can be variations of the same basic style, which allows you to have up to 12 variations of a single style (4 panel Variations times 3 Composer Banks)

Once you have loaded one of the styles from SD Card to COMPOSER memory, you then have the option to transfer one of the style Banks in to any one of the CUSTOM Memories, by using the procedure on Page 121 of your manual. Using this option, you can build up a group of 20 styles of your choice, which will remain in the CUSTOM memory - even after turning off the power - until you deliberately change one or more of these styles, by overwriting a location. This means that once you have loaded up a number of say your favourite styles to CUSTOM memory, you will have instant access to them, just as if they were built-in styles......
The CUSTOM memory is implemented in Flash Memory - similar to the SD Card - so retains its content until overwritten by new content, but the COMPOSER Memory is of a Volatile type and only retains its content for a short while, after turning off the KN7000 power.

Like Bob, I don't use the CUSTOM memory to any great extent - I just load a new style, directly from an SD Card. But, having said that, the CUSTOM memory can be useful..... but that's another story

Very perceptive, Bill. I think you found his problem. When he said he "pressed the custom style load button" I thought he was referring to the load button for custom file load/save rather than the yellow SD load button. You are right, he is interchanging custom and composer memory in his thinking.

Yup - my delving was heading in that direction too - see seperate thread where I said:
Good point Alec - but you will know as well as I that understanding precisely what folk mean when they put a message on here takes a bit of delving into sometimes...chuckle...
I've just noticed that Trevor wrote and I quote 'but do find some of the built in styles a bit dated and would very much like to be able to load others.' which kind of suggests to me that working with other style files than the built in standard and custom styles is foreign to him...so I'm delving....
I think our nearly bald Trevor - his words not mine - needds a bit of a training course..

The full story has still not been told: The Custom Load/Save button only loads SINGLE custom styles into individual slots in the custom section. Full custom loads (20 styles at once) are saved and loaded under the SD button along with Composers, Songs, Sounds and others which can be selectively chosen to be saved or loaded. If no SINGLE customs have been saved on the card then it is no wonder that menu shows no contents.

Single customs are saved in an entirely different folder to the TfldXXX folders, namely a Custom folder inside the KN7000 folder within the card structure. This folder can simply be dragged and dropped between SD cards without affecting the menu view because it does not depend on any index inf file. Likewise any single custom *.cst files can just be dropped into this folder without any special pc program like SDExplorer to then show up in that menu.

....and that's precisely why I made my last remark on my previous post

Quote "... but that's another story "

and now you've got it!

Alec, I agree totally with you. Single loads of custom memory files was the way I initially filled the custom memory locations. Back when I was playing older keyboards, I routinely filled custom memory with styles that I would use for the next hour or so. I used any trick I could think of, to avoid loading from disk. It just took too long. . .

Now, I only use custom memory to store some generic stuff that I sometimes use as a starting point for setting up the keyboard for a song or a medley. But, once I have the keyboard set up, I always save it to a SD memory location and then forget what I had in custom memory from that point on for that song. I also have a set of memory locations in my SD card that contain generic styles like Latin, or Big Band Slow, and that sort of thing. I used to keep that stuff in Custom Memory. On rare occasions, I might use some of the custom memory stuff for playing songs at random for which I don’t have a previously planned setup, but most often use the generic area of my SD card for that purpose.

Bill, I am curious to know how you find custom memory useful with the KN7000. There’s still a lot of stuff this old guy can learn.

So, to summarise For Trevor John's benefit - there are broadly speaking three types of rhythm/style files...
1. Those that are built into the keyboard and are found in 14 of the 16 rhythm group buttons.
2. A limited number of changeable Custom styles found/loaded in the Custom style button area.
3. An amazingly large number of other style files which when downloaded to a floppy disk or SD Card will show up one at a time but not as a collection in the sixteenth button called Memory load when you load any one of them from a floppy disk or SD Card

I believe this last differs somewhat from the Yamaha approach where additional style files can be downloaded into the keyboard in quantity and then be selected from. No doubt this is currently confusing Tevor John as he expects to find these sorts of styles in quantity in Custom styles area in the KN7000.

One should add that updating the O/S does not change any of this in the slightest.

[This message has been edited by RMepstead (edited 02-13-2010).]

Hi Bob,

In answer to your specific question : one of the groups I play with, sometimes do a medley of up to eight songs, with no actual breaks between the songs. So there is no opportunity to load different set-ups from SD Card, between the songs. All the songs within the medley, use different styles, tempos and sounds. I have the styles loaded in eight of the Custom memory locations and each style is linked into one of the eight Panel Memory locations, together with the sounds (Right1,Right2 and Left) and tempo, associated with each song. So, during the performance of the medley, it is only necessary to step through the Panel Memories 1-8 at the appropriate times, to advance to the set-up for the next song.
The Custom Memory is of course loaded from SD Card, prior to the medley performance and takes around 20 seconds to load.
The reason for using Custom Memory is that the styles used have been composed specifically for the songs within the medley, rather than using the 'generic' built-in styles.

Yes, Bill, I can see how that would work. I do have several song setups where panel memory buttons choose different built in rhythms and composer rhythms, as well as voicing, at different places of the song or medley. I have 24 panel memory buttons to work with, and usually progress through them with a foot switch. But, I don't remember any that use totally different styles on the fly. My routine is to do a custom copy and move any custom style rhythm that I might be using to the composer, before I save to SD.

Thanks very much everyone who has contributed to this thread. Sorry to not have come back before but have been rather tied up since Friday. I think I have got my now hairless head around most of the tutorial above for which I am most grateful.The most annoying thing is that I used to be able to do all this on my previous KN7000 but have simply forgotten all of it. It is, unfortunately, a common failing of octogenarians along with the inability to pick the keyboard up with one finger as one used to. ( I wish ).
I am working the rest of this week but will sort out a few of the styles that I want to use when I get the board back indoors after the week-end and see how I get on using the invaluable advice you have given me.

Thanks again

Trevor

Hello Everyone,

I've just caught up with the latest on Bernie's styles. Firstly, I'd like to say I have the KN SD Explorer tool which is usually simplicity itself to use but even that came up with the message that the SD Card is empty. I usually use Sandisk cards, so I bought another make (just in case) and got the same response.

Secondly, I can see all the files on my PC but going on Bill's imput, it's going to take a long time to drag and drop them onto another card, but I will try it later when I have the time.

Thirdly, I thought these were normal styles not Custom Styles and would appreciate confirmation on exactly what they are. If they are custom styles, that could be why the KN Explorer tool wouldn't load them.

Bob: your idea to make step-by-step notes is a good one, but I have to say I have three small plastic boxes each containing around 8 SD Cards with 99 Folders on each that our Keyboard Club members and myself have shared/swapped over the years using the KN SD Explorer Tool, with absolutely no problem at all, so I still think my PC is the culprit. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Audrey

Audrey, if you see the files at the PC (the TFLD files) and you can't see them at the KN7000, it means that you have not copied the KN7000mn.inf file with the KN7000 folder, or the .inf file is corrupted. The KN7000mn.inf file contains, among other things, an index of all the files including the long names that you have given to each style or song. The integrity of that file is paramount. It must be copied as a part of the KN7000 folder along with the TFLD files. So, when styles are copied to a SD card with Windows Explorer of the PC, the copy must contain the complete KN7000 folder with all the TFLD files as well as the KN7000mn.inf file.

[This message has been edited by Bob Hendershot (edited 02-24-2010).]

Re thirdly Audrey...
Bernies styles are normal styles not 'custom' styles.

Hi again Audrey - re firstly and secondly...
If you like I'll get hold of an SD Card and download Bernie's styles onto it for you - I think I've got your address somewhere following Cambridge...
They really are worth having and I'd not come across most of them before.

That's got to be a first Roger !!!