loading midi to files

I found Bill's advice helpful on loading midi to sd card , is it possible to load a midi to a styles file on the sd card?
If yes could some one please advice me.
Loading to the playlist is ltd to 20 but loading to a styles file I could find by looking alphabetically with no restrictions on numbers.
Or have i got this wrong or missed something?
thanks in advance Joe

Hello Rotty,

When you load an SD Card, to the right of the screen you will see the option to load by Folder, Alphabet or Number. I believe this is relevant to whatever data is stored on the card.

Click on the Alphabet and you will see all your songs are immediately sorted in alphabetical order, make your choice and load. Try it and see if it works for you.

Audrey

Hiya Rotty
Download your midi from your computer onto a floppy disk. Put the floppy disk into the floppy disk slot in your KN7000. If the KN7000 screen doesn't change press the disk load button. Press 'load' screen button. Change load as to GM/GM2 to NX. Select midi file that you want to load on screen. Press screen load button. Press the big yellow SD Load button. Press Load on screen. Select free Folder/song space and press on screen load.
You can then as you suggest find that midi alphabetically with no restrictions on numbers.

Thank you both very much for your help.
I now know what I am trying to ask.
I have styles that I have saved on my computer and I can load all these in one go up to the cards capacity to a s.d card and load all and use in the kn7000.I have several dvd's with a round a 1000 midi tunes on each.If I save them to the computer and then save to the s.d card the kn7000 does not recognize them.
So I guess I need to convert the midi files on the dvd to the same format as the styles for the kn7000 to recognize them.Also if I down load a midi file from the internet on to a floppy it recognizes it in the kn7000 but if I save them same internet downloads to an s.d card the kn7000 does not recognize them.
So again I guess I need to convert the format of the file.Thnks for any help Joe

the sd load by alphabet will not work for midi files, and neither will they be seen just be loading them as nx, you would need to save them ALL individually as nx first.

my method for fast load of many midi files is described in the link here http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum25/HTML/005246.html

you could save as technics files and then load by alphabet but it is not necessary as 999 midi files can be saved on an sd card with 99 playlists so all you have to do is create 26 playlists a to z and load the relevant midis to those playlists (only 26 operations needed as opposed to 1000 saves!)to have a quick alphabet select load without using any technics spaces on the card.

postscript: each playlist has a limit of 99 songs so if any are greater than this just copy the songs to T1 and T2 etc.

Thank you very much for the answer.
From my very very limited knowledge I can save styles to computer and then save to a s.d card
in very large batches instantly.
If I do the same with a midi file Technics does not recognize that format so does not show it or load it.
So is there a programme or a way of converting midi files to the same format as styles?
If there was i could save all the thousands of midi files i have on computer and save to s.d card in large batches witch i would not have to sort as they would load alphabetically.
The other way I create 26 playlists load 20 midi files at a time to a floppy load to the kn7000 which is very slow and they will go anywhere so then i have to move them around to the 26 slots.
Please forgive me if i this all wrong and the only way is to do it the second way then so be it I will go that way I want to be sure there is no quicker way.
Thanks for your patients regards Joe

Hi joe,
Reading through your posts, I think there is some confusion in your mind about the various file formats used in the KN7000. I realise that you are probably a relatively new owner of your KN7000 and some explanation may help............

An external KN7000 format Style file loads either from Floppy Disk or SD Card, into the COMPOSER section of the Auto-Accompaniment system and comprises one or more Variations of a repetative loop - similar to any of the Built-In Styles in the RHYTHM GROUP. There are usually 4 Variations within a Style and each Variation can be up to 16 measures in length. The thing to note is that when a selected Variation is played, it just keeps going round in an endless Loop until another Variation is selected or the style is stopped. In itself, a Style is usually generic rather than specific - in other words, it can be used as an accompaniment to several different songs or tunes. You can regard most of the Built-In KN7000 styles as generic. However, Styles can be built to fit specific songs or tunes. External Style Files can also be loaded up to 20 at a time into the CUSTOM MEMORY of the KN7000. Put briefly, a Style File is purely a means of providing an Auto-Accompaniment..........

A MIDI File is totally different to a Style - it is generally a complete multi-track SEQUENCE of a specific song or tune - not an Accompaniment Loop. This being the case, you cannot regard a MIDI file as a replacement for a Style - it is basically a complete recording of a song or tune, which may or may not include the actual Melody line. However, you can if you wish, locate which track of the MIDI file contains the Melody line, mute the track and then play along with it.

As far as converting a MIDI File to a Style is concerned, there is no direct way of achieving this and as far as I am aware, such a conversion program does not exist. Having said that, it is possible within the KN7000's operating system, to extract some of the data from a MIDI File and build a Style from some of the tracks of the MIDI File. However, it is quite a long and fairly involved process to create just one complete Style from a MIDI and I'm sure you would not wish to do this for the '1000s' of MIDI files on your PC !

You have already been advised in a previous post in this thread, how to transfer multiple MIDI Files from your PC to an SD Card. This is the only way to carry out the transfer - just Copying and Pasting or Dragging and Dropping from a folder on your PC directly to an SD Card in a Reader/Writer, will not work.

Finally, you state "...I can save styles to computer and then save to a s.d card in very large batches instantly." Would you care to explain in more detail, exactly what you mean by this ?

No, follow my instructions and you can load up to 99 songs to a playlist very quickly, obviously in batches of alphabetically sorted which will require no moving around. Forget floppies, they are a waste of time compared to sd.



[This message has been edited by technicsplayer (edited 09-25-2010).]

It does, the EMC software can do it, as did the far cheaper Song to Style floppy. The auto results were somewhat hit and miss, but not bad with some editing. A few tweaks of the manual options gave quite reasonable results including variations, fills, intros and endings.

With the greatest respect I think maybe we're missing Joe's point. Seems to me he's got CDs (he calls them DVDs) with loads of midi files on which he wants to transfer IN BULK to an SD Card...and in the process have them available on that SD Card in such a way that he can find them immediately using the KN7000 facility of searching alphabetically....
So they need to be loaded to the same area that style files would be loaded and not to the midi area which latter cannot be subsequently searched alphabetically.
Am I right Joe?

Brilliant you are spot on.
I called them dvd because some have 80,000 midi files on and I thought they must be a dvd to have such a high capacity.Sorry if this confused matters.
What you said is exactly what i am trying to do
I have been around technics for many years and owned most of the keyboards and 5 dig piano's.
I bought the kn7000 and was so pleased with that when a brand new one came up I bought that
so this is my second kn7000.
For my age I understand some tech bought I certainly have a limited knowledge and the first to admit that.
What would i do without the help of this forum.I would be stuck in the old days i I was a member of the technics club and could
phone up for any help.
I do not want to use the midi as a styles I just want to put it in that area as to me it seems a quicker way.
Many Thanks joe

Hi Bill,
Finally, you state "...I can save styles to computer and then save to a s.d card in very large batches instantly." Would you care to explain in more detail, exactly what you mean by this ?
I save say 20 styles to the computer, then add different ones say another 10 save them to the s.d card and the kn 7000 reads it as 30 styles.

regards joe

Rog and Joe, as has been stated, you cannot load MIDI files directly into the area which the Style Files occupy - or indeed any of the Technics File areas - to allow the use of the Technics Alphabetical search. The two formats are just not compatible.

Alec's method of pre-selecting the MIDI files into Alphabetical Groups, before copying into Playlists, will produce a simple alternative to the Technics search and is the easiest solution. It does require a bit of effort to pre-organise / select the files into groups, rather than just grabbing a bunch of randomly named files to process into Playlists.

However, as has also been mentioned, there is a method which will allow Alphabetic searching using the Technics system, but it is a bit long-winded, if - as in Joe's case- the user has very many MIDI files. Unfortunately, you can only process one MIDI file at a time, rather than multiple files in a single transfer operation, using Alec's procedure.

Load the MIDI File (Which is normally a Sequence) into the KN7000 sequencer as an NX file ( GM/GM2 > NX) and then re-save the Sequencer as a Technics Sequence. This also allows you to carry out some modifications to the MIDI file - should you wish to do so - such as transposing the key and also substituting the KN7000's superior sounds for the generic MIDI sounds, before you finally save the Sequence to a Technics Folder on the SD Card. Note that there is no point in selecting any options other than 'SEQUENCER' on page 2 of the SD Save dialog - just select 'ALL OFF' and then turn on the 'SEQUENCER' option.

With regard to the use of EMC Styleworks to create a Style from a Midi Sequence, when I used that program back in my KN6000 days, I was not impressed with the results. I found the program to be very good at converting Styles from other manufacturer's keyboards to Technics format, but was disappointed with the MIDI to Style creation, except for MIDI files which were pretty basic and only had a few tracks. As you stated Alec, without some extra work, the results were often a bit 'Hit and Miss' . On this basis, I would not recommend the program purely for MIDI to Style creation, hence my previous remarks - just my opinion....

No effort required at all, copy 999 midis to a folder on your pc and they are automatically arranged alphabetically! Then select the "A"s and drag to the IMEXPORT folder and input to playlist A on the 7000. Empty IMEXPORT and repeat for the "B"s. You effectively have the same alpha look up as the technics alpha sort, at effort at least a hundred times faster than loading and saving a thousand individual midis as a technics files...

As far as the midi to style it worked well enough if you listened to the midi and selected the appropriate options first, the floppy version for use in the keyboard also had manual selections which significantly improved results.

I want to thank all of you for your help.
I will now sit-down and get this sorted.

Regards joe

I always format a new SD Card in the Technics KN7000 before loading anything from the PC in order that the KN can easily recognise the data and I was wondering whether it would be wise for Rotty to do this, or isn't it necessary with midi files?

Audrey

inexperienced users should always format in the 7k.

Historically a fat format on the pc enabled many more technics files to be accommodated on small sd cards due to the smaller cluster size, as much as up to 30% increase in technics/midi saves compared to a 7k format. The downside is that digital audio will not be available on a pc fat format card, just technics and midi files.

However nowadays for cheap 1GB cards it's immaterial since you can't fill a 1GB card within the menu system capacity of technics/midi without my special tricks to go beyond the 99 folder limit.