2019-05-21 by smw-mail@...
Thanks for mentioning these tools, Royce!
I know I looked at Mark's site before--a few years ago (2013) I think when you were telling me about the BCR/BCF and his resources for those. Evidently, I was more interested in his Music Cognition thesis than the MIDITools as I seem to have unzipped the thesis (and read through it) but not installed his software!
I was doing my Arduino stuff around 2012, so was probably talking about my massive arduino-based midi controller.
It looks like I was done mapping the E-Mu sysex bank data file structures (P2K/CS/Audity formats). It looks like my interest in mining E-Mu's Remote Control goes back to 2009. So by 2012 I probably had no interest in starting another mining adventure!! (Been there, done that; time to move onto something different!)
And by the time I started exploring the potential for using web browsers for internet-based sysex stuff (probably circa 2014-2016), I had forgotten about Mark's software. Also, I must have figured I had mined enough hidden stuff to move on to other adventures--i.e., trying to implement E-Mu's Remote Control via web browsers.
When this thing about the missing FEnvTrig source turned up, for me it was PURELY secondary (or tertiary) to developing arps-based presets for my own personal music-making (and possibly sharing tricks/tips about arps) and the Extension Interval bug.
Nevertheless, I will certainly download the newest version of Mark's MIDITools--and will unpack/install it this time as it seems to be a time saver for even quickie sysex explorations. Who knows--I >>might<< want to tackle a longer sysex mining adventure!
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The new addition to your software also looks quite handy. I will take a look at that, too.
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On a related note, a couple of weeks ago, I FINALLY test drove your E-Mu Librarian. Not sure I mentioned this, but it is quite nice (although I barely touched the surface of its potential just using it to back up some banks on a new-to-me P2K with a non-wonky main encoder).
In fact (someday), I have on my to-do list exporting all my saved (i.e., years-and-years of) E-Mu syx banks from Cakewalk project files to import and reorganize them (prune, reorder, notate, etc.) using your Librarian. It looks like an excellent tool for this kind of reorganization project--and probably other uses I will undoubtedly find along the way.
KUDOS to you for the E-Mu Librarian!!! (Apologies if I didn't mention this before.)
Also, I used Ray's OS Updater to effortlessly update the non-wonky-encoder P2K OS (1.23, I think) to OS 2.26. (In fact I captured the on-screen process in OBS.)
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Tangent: Display Brightness:
One final thing which you or someone else might have thoughts on. It is about the problem of hard-to-read displays an relates to the new-to-me P2K.
Years ago, I replaced a display and discovered that the brightness (not angle!) seemed to be more a function of the E-Mu mobo or PSU than the display itself. I believe I confirmed this a week or so ago when I replaced the defective display in the new-to-me unit with the display from the old-to-me V2K with very wonky encoder:
The much dimmer display from the V2K was considerably brighter when put into the new-to-me P2K.
Likewise, the brighter-but-slightly-defective P2K display was considerably dimmer when put into the V2K box!!!!! Ergo, I have concluded that something about the mobo or psu affects display brightness.
I haven't seen anyone else mention anything like this before (though maybe I missed it). I'd be interested to know others' thoughts/experiences/etc.
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Non-ROM E-Mus as Arpeggiators (with possibly up to 32-channel midi arpeggiation):
As for how this relates to the original topic--developing arps and the tertiary sysex topic:
The V2K-with-the-very-wonky-encoder-and-slightly-defective-display (and no ROMS) is in the process of being set up as an arpeggiator for external modules (probably non-E-Mu modules because the 32 arps the E-Mus have is really more than enough!) and as a test unit for being remotely controlled--probably with (1) an arduino-based controller (with sliders!) and/or (2) web-based tools.
I will probably find uses for Mark's and Royce's tools with the V2K-as-arpeggiator-repurposing project. I imagine designing arp presets (and user arp pattrerns) on an E-Mu with ROMs before converting them for use in the not-so-standalone V2K Arpeggiator. For managing and transferring !RP:xxxxxxxx presets, I think the Librarian would be ideal.
So, thanks for mentioning the tools, Royce.
--Steve