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ando, I know why half-pedalling is important, that much is obvious. What you need to get through your small head is the fact that I know that and that I have stated it many times that I know that. Just because I am a beginner doesn't mean I don't know what half-pedalling it, get it now? Read it again if you still don't get it. Got it now? I find it amusing you have been reduced to making up stuff in your posts. It is you who lives in a simplistic world, just because they can sell something for a low price or even give it away for free, it doesn't mean that they should or will. I will let you figure out the real world examples for this one, hint look around you it is everywhere in this world. You have too much time on your hands, I know for myself I don't bother reading up on other people like yourself. A waste of time. You are better off spending the time reading about business, looks like you could use some help on that. (And way to leave out all the great posts that I make. A bit biased of you.) Like I said, pay more money for a better keyboard. Don't be stingy, just pay. (Oh you really hurt Casio's feelings just because you said you are not going to buy the PX-5S. I have a suggestion, just wait for the PX-6S to come out, it will have all the extra features you need, and the price will be $1,500+, cause you have to pay for them.) Pay it up boy. Pay up or shut up. You are not getting it for free. Get it through your head. Go buy the Yamaha CP1 if you dare. You have too much time on your hands, I know for myself I don't bother reading up on other people like yourself. A waste of time. You are better off spending the time reading about business, looks like you could use some help on that. (And way to leave out all the great posts that I make. A bit biased of you.)
Like I said, pay more money for a better keyboard. Don't be stingy, just pay. (Oh you really hurt Casio's feelings just because you said you are not going to buy the PX-5S. I have a suggestion, just wait for the PX-6S to come out, it will have all the extra features you need, and the price will be $1,500+, cause you have to pay for them.) I didn't have to spend any time on those quotes from you. I had already posted them previously about 2 weeks ago. It was just copy/paste. You left that thread with your tail between your legs. But I've got the week off - so yes, I do have plenty of time on my hands this week.  Regarding this thread: Why is it that you are unable to let a member just express his opinion? I didn't involve you in it. Why do you feel the need to spend your valuable time advising me what to do with my money? Your input was not required. You business types always think your view is so sophisticated and that people need to understand all the market realities. In fact, it's not complex in this case. I know this wouldn't have been technically hard or expensive for Casio to do. It wouldn't affect their position in the marketplace, their unit price, their profit per unit. It's small change. I have enough money to buy a DP, it's nothing to do with money. You won't let that assumption go - and it's your assumption. I'll say it again, the PX5s is a great product and I would get one if it had half-pedalling. I don't believe it would be expensive to implement because it's only a question of input - the sound module already can do it apparently. I believe Casio merely made an oversight here. It was rushed to market before NAMM - I suspect that is one of the reasons. They have marketed this as a gigging instrument, but also as a MIDI controller. As a gigging instrument, they made the determination that half-pedaling was less important. However as a MIDI controller, it does need it because half-pedaling is an important realism feature of software pianos. The Casio is already cheap, they should have tacked on $20 to the price to include this feature. They already own the right circuitry. I'll happily pay more for this stuff. heck, I'd pay $200 more to have this feature. Me going out to buy a different, more expensive board is irrelevant. There is no board with the mix of features the Casio has (piano+synth+MIDI control). I'm merely suggesting the half-pedal feature is very valuable to advanced players. I know you think you get the importance of half-pedal, you can't really know just how valuable it is because you aren't advanced enough as a player. I'm aware of what's out there in the market - there is nothing quite like the Casio. It's a great product with one shortcoming. I'm asking Casio to look into this for their next model. The reason I'm going hard on this is so it's kept on the agenda. I'm not going to do as you suggest and just assume that the next model will have half-pedal. What if they don't hear any objections so they just assume people don't care? This thread has kept it on the agenda and I have no doubt that Mike Martin will pass this information on. If that's the case, mission accomplished. I don't plan to go on about this, but given that this thread has become a direct line of communication between Mike at Casio and us, the buying public, this discussion serves an important purpose. We get to say what we want and influence future design, rather than manufacturers working in a vacuum. Thank-you, you've really set me straight..
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Unless I am misinterpreting what Mike Martin has said on another forum the PX-5S will respond to midi CC messages without resorting to the use of Local Off/'Midi Loop'. That being so it should be possible to play the keyboard and use half-pedalling via midi. A device that I do find very useful and pretty flexible is the Behringer FCB1010. Providing that you don't mind using a 'swell/volume' pedal this may well enable you to perform half-pedalling via midi CC. Might take a while to get used to the technique though  .
willf
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The only real issue with this is that the incoming MIDI signal will be for one specific MIDI channel. The PX-5S can operate on 4 zones. If you dedicate one zone for piano then that pedal will operate as a real-time controller for that zone but not the other 3.
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A device that I do find very useful and pretty flexible is the Behringer FCB1010. Providing that you don't mind using a 'swell/volume' pedal this may well enable you to perform half-pedalling via midi CC. Might take a while to get used to the technique though . That would get very exhausting for piano. Expression pedals have a large range of travel, and they don't have a return spring. It's not really how a pianist wants a sustain pedal to work. You want to be able to engage and disengage it very quickly, and partially, with a good deal of precision. But you could get a proper continuous piano pedal and calibrate it to send the right range of MIDI values.
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Once you start using Local-off as a default state for playing the Casio, I should be very careful to read the MIDI implementation chart for all received and processed MIDI data the Casio can handle. Also about all the knobs and sliders and what they do - and do not send over MIDI out. The risk is , that in Local Off mode, not all onboard controls and features might work. Or not work as expected. All in all the Casio might not behave exactly the same in Local-off mode as in normal operation. Sometimes some knobs of sliders don't send MIDI to the output, meaning their useless in Local-off mode. Local off is mainly developed to use a device as a sound module for sequencing or played from an external controller. That's why I fear it's not 100% the same as using the board Local-On. Beware...
Second thing is that you introduce some unwanted MIDI delay between key-presses and the sound, that are not there when using the board in normal Local-On mode.
Perhaps we can us the breath controller input ;-)
But seriously... JFP, Were you joking about all of this or does this occur in other instruments? Mike and Anotherscott have not indicated any of this is an issue, in the case of the PX5S and loop workaround at least. The sliders and knobs all behave the same whether local control is on or off. "Local Off" basically disconnects the keybed from the sound generator, that's all. The keybed and sound generator both continue to function, all you've done is broken the connection between them. So then connecting the MIDI OUT to the MIDI IN re-establishes that connection, and you get sound again. Although this may not be the most common reason to use Local Off, one of the things it does is allow you to combine your keybed playing with additional MIDI data and use that combination to trigger the sound engine. The additional MIDI data, in this case, is what you can generate with the MIDI Solutions box and a suitable pedal.
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The only real issue with this is that the incoming MIDI signal will be for one specific MIDI channel. The PX-5S can operate on 4 zones. If you dedicate one zone for piano then that pedal will operate as a real-time controller for that zone but not the other 3. Mike, thanks for clarifying that. Does each zone have to have a unique midi channel? (Not a problem for me). Does this apply if a Hex Layer is assigned to a zone? - I hope the terminology is correct.
Last edited by willf; 03/12/13 09:07 AM.
willf
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I wasn't joking. I said it 'might' not behave as expected. I had that on other boards, cause not all the controls that functioned well for the internal engine did send MIDI over the MIDI output. If that is the case, these controls are useless when using the proposed MIDI loop setup. Second thing I encountered in the past was that the controls send other, more general MIDI controller messages to the output midi, that differed from how the controls send data to the internal engine , meaning midi loop and pure onboard use were not one on one.
If Casio sends all(!) the control data exactly in the same way to its outputs as it is used when in local mode, then there's nothing to worry about. Mike stated that this is the case, so my fear was premature. Lots of text for nothing ;-)
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Mike,
thanks for clarifying that. Does each zone have to have a unique midi channel?
Yes, each of the four zones are on their own MIDI channel. Each zone can trigger an internal sound, an external MIDI device or both simultaneously. Even MIDI and USB ports are desperately addressable. Does this apply if a Hex Layer is assigned to a zone? A HexLayer is a single sound, made up of six sample layers. This is one tone on one zone. On the PX-5S you can do two of these at once on zones 1 and 2.
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Yes, each of the four zones are on their own MIDI channel. Each zone can trigger an internal sound, an external MIDI device or both simultaneously. Even MIDI and USB ports are desperately addressable. Desperately addressable, I like that. ;-) Just to confirm what willf said, though... You can integrate an external pedal controller over MIDI without having to do the "Local Off, MIDI loop back" trick that some other Casios have needed for adding additional MIDI control, right? That would be nice, because otherwise, the internal sound engine effectively becomes an external MIDI device, which would mean that each zone could only trigger one sound (the logically external, which in this case would really be internal), as opposed to triggering the internal sound plus some other truly external sound.
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You can integrate an external pedal controller over MIDI without having to do the "Local Off, MIDI loop back" trick that some other Casios have needed for adding additional MIDI control, right? Correct although it will have the limitations that I stated above of controlling just one zone because the incoming MIDI signal will likely only be on one channel.
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Correct although it will have the limitations that I stated above of controlling just one zone because the incoming MIDI signal will likely only be on one channel. Half-pedaling one piano sound at a time on a single MIDI channel should be plenty! Really, I would put this in the category of "it's a feature, not a limitation." I would want external MIDI controls to be channel/zone specific. Another good use of this capability (again, with the MIDI Solutions box) would be to connect an expression pedal. By having it affect only one channel/zone, you could use that pedal to, for example, fade strings in under piano. If the pedal instead were global to all zones, it would affect the volume of everything, which is not as useful. I mean, if that's all you want, you can just put a plain analog volume pedal on the line outs to begin with. An advantage of a MIDI expression pedal is that you can be more selective in what it does.
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One thing I was not considering is that the MIDI Solutions Pedal Controller requires use of the MIDI Output for voltage to operate.
If you set your zones to be internal control only, you still don't have "loop back" or turn local control off, but you will have to have the MIDI output connected.
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?
I'm confused.
Could you, or someone else describe in simple words a schematic that 'just works' to get half-pedaling working on one channel with an external MIDI pedal. That 'seems' to be possible now after al info exchanges in this thread. I just don't get the last few remarks about the pedal controller and needed MIDI out, MIDI loops and/or Local ON (or was it off in the end ?)
Apart from that getting this pedal controller programmed in an easy way is a mystery to me. The documentation contains some tech talk, but no real usable 'dummy-proof' explanations. Perhaps this isn't the holy grail solution and there is a simpler , easy to set-up, MIDI pedal on the market. I didn't spend hours looking into this pedal controller, but can imagine chances it will work are equal to not working at all from where we are now in information gathering ?
Edit: sorry - didn't get the Voltage thingie. However if you connect the MIDI OUt of the Casio to the MIDI IN of the Pedal controller, the signal will be merged with the voltage control pedal input right ? Meaning it is send out of the Pedal Controller MIDI-OUT again and thus creating a MIDI loop ? Still see things going "oeps"...
Last edited by JFP; 03/20/13 09:04 AM.
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One thing I was not considering is that the MIDI Solutions Pedal Controller requires use of the MIDI Output for voltage to operate.
If you set your zones to be internal control only, you still don't have [to] "loop back" or turn local control off, but you will have to have the MIDI output connected. Good point. And the Pedal Controller itself has a switchable parameter for "MIDI echo" so you can choose whether or not you want MIDI appearing at its input to be passed along to its output, so it would work fine regardless. Also, if someone wants to simultaneously use the Casio's 5-pin MIDI Out for some other purpose (i.e. to connect to a sound module), a MIDI Thru box should do the trick, or alternatively, MIDI Solutions also makes a separate 9V power adapter so their Pedal Controller can be powered independently, without having to be connected to the board's MIDI Out at all.
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Could you, or someone else describe in simple words a schematic that 'just works' to get half-pedaling working on one channel with an external MIDI pedal. Not having a Pedal Controller, DP-10, PX-5S combo myself, I can't test this, but I think this should work, and would usually be the simplest way to do it: CONNECTIONS --- Casio MIDI Out to MS box MIDI IN (for power... though as mentioned in my previous post, there are other ways to do this) --- MS box MIDI Out to Casio MIDI IN --- Roland DP10 pedal to MS Box MS BOX PROGRAMMING (edit: do this part first) Use a sequencer on your computer to send the following two Sysex strings to the MS box F0 00 00 50 16 00 00 00 00 00 00 F7 (This sets the box to NOT echo MIDI data from its input to its output... it may not be necessary to send this command at all if that's the default, or if you choose to power the MS box with a separate power adapter) F0 00 00 50 16 01 00 40 00 00 7F F7 (This tells the box that the pedal should send Sustain Pedal CC data from 00 to 127 on MIDI channel 1) You can change it do a different MIDI channel by changing one of those numbers... in fact, you can actually tell it to send this data on one, two, three, or four MIDI channels of your choice, simultaneously. (So much for the "limitation" Mike mentioned of it only affecting one channel... it doesn't have to if you don't want it to.) All the programming info is detailed at http://www.midisolutions.com/MIDI%20Solutions%20Pedal%20Controller.pdfp.s. -- you only have to program the box once, it retains the instruction until reprogrammed.
Last edited by anotherscott; 03/20/13 03:05 PM.
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Or even better, Casio puts half-pedal capability on the PX-5s in the first place...
Honestly, this is an overblown solution to something that should never have been allowed to become a problem. Its ludicrous to have ever uttered the line that nobody would miss half-pedal when playing a live gig. I'm sure the successor to the PX5s will have this capability. I'll just wait until then before I bother. It's just too much hassle. A pity, I would have definitely bought one if it weren't for this.
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Or even better, Casio puts half-pedal capability on the PX-5s in the first place...
Honestly, this is an overblown solution to something that should never have been allowed to become a problem. Its ludicrous to have ever uttered the line that nobody would miss half-pedal when playing a live gig. I'm sure the successor to the PX5s will have this capability. I'll just wait until then before I bother. It's just too much hassle. A pity, I would have definitely bought one if it weren't for this. It's two extra wires to run (MIDI In, MIDI Out), and a one-time 5 minute procedure. I guess only you can decide if that's worth the effort. But what will you be using in the mean time? I have to say, I also question how audible half-pedaling will be in a gig situation, unless maybe you're doing solo piano gigs. If that's crucial for someone, and the process above is too much to deal with, they can buy an FP-4F or whatever... but then you'll lose something else. (The PX-5S does plenty that the FP does not.) You may never find a board with every feature you want, so then you have to choose what you're willing to lose. At least in this case, there is a way to add the feature to the Casio if you want to.
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Or even better, Casio puts half-pedal capability on the PX-5s in the first place... Yep, but since this is NOT the case and not going to happen anymore according to Mike (technically impossible due to hardware design ?!) you can either wait another 1,5 or 2 years for the next Casio stage, or get over it and use this work-around as a solution. Don't like it either, but it's just the way it is. By the way - finally some pricing on the Casio in our little European country: € 999 I expected something more like € 1199, like before with the introduction of the PX3, so I'm happy. Saves the extra bucks for the half pedal solution. O BTW, Mike can we have some more pure AP demo's (please ....) 
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Or even better, Casio puts half-pedal capability on the PX-5s in the first place...
Honestly, this is an overblown solution to something that should never have been allowed to become a problem. Its ludicrous to have ever uttered the line that nobody would miss half-pedal when playing a live gig. I'm sure the successor to the PX5s will have this capability. I'll just wait until then before I bother. It's just too much hassle. A pity, I would have definitely bought one if it weren't for this. It's two extra wires to run (MIDI In, MIDI Out), and a one-time 5 minute procedure. I guess only you can decide if that's worth the effort. But what will you be using in the mean time? And the extra piece of gear to make it happen... More crap to deal with on a stage. Come on! On/off pedaling - that is so 90's! I would miss half-pedal on any gig because I play solo intros and pieces. No serious pianist is going to be indifferent to good pedal performance. This whole workaround thing suggests it is important but they just stuffed up by not including it. Ok, I accept it, it's not there. But all this talk of simple solutions is a bit rich. Most of the musicians I know have pretty bad technical skills and would struggle with the solutions you outlined in the posts above - regardless of how easy they seem to you. Also, if you have to buy a MIDI solutions box for $150+, that's not just chump change. I just wish people would stop acting so grateful that there is a cheap keyboard with good features that it's somehow heresy to actually criticise the lack of a pretty basic feature in continuous pedaling. I think anybody buying a modern DP has the right expect that it is there. There will be people who don't look at the specs for pedaling because it just seems like a no-brainer. For them, this will be disappointing. I am shocked that any members here would say a live gigging musician wouldn't notice it. It's not as if piano sounds are always just mush in the middle of a dense band mix. Acoustic piano sounds are often intentionally exposed and expressive - even in band music. I just find this whole thing a bit weird is all. Anyway, I won't say anything more about this. I've had a good run. Carry on!
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OK - so I say it (because I agree); "I hereby criticize the lack of half pedaling support on the PX5S" See ? And now it still will NOT be available on the PX5 whether I make this statement or not. So for me and other potential buyers the ONLY workaround to get this done on the PX5 (if you still want a PX5 for the rest of it's features) is the MIDI workaround as described above. Or wait for the PX6 , or 7 , or.....zzzz 
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