Kawai K1 Operations

Setting your Kawai to do clever things once you've lost the manual is a bit tricky. Each major category below lets you do one thing.

SysEx stands for "System Exclusive" and indicates special messages that your computer sends to, or receives from the K1 to configure it's internal patches (settings to determine how each instrument choice sounds).

If the device below is not mentioned in a step, assume it is the K1. If you see ???, it means the value could be anything. K1 keys are show in GREEN, and the display of the K1 is shown in YELLOW.

Good Luck Mr. Phelps. Should you, or any member of your I.M. force, be discovered, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

Setting up your equipment

  1. Attach the MIDI cables from your K1 to your computer's MIDI adaptor.
  2. Power up the K1 and your computer.
  3. Start your computer's SysEx capable MIDI software (we use something called "MidiTools" for the Amiga).

Disabling protection so you can write changes into your K1

  1. Push SYSTEM once to display SYSTEM/MIDI =???
  2. Push NO or YES as needed until the display is SYSTEM/MIDI =SYS
  3. Push SYSTEM 3 times to display SYSTEM INT PROTECT=???
  4. Push NO or YES as needed until the display is SYSTEM INT PROTECT=NO
  5. Push I.i/E.e once to display whatever patch is on that instrument. This is just to get out of system mode.

Turning on MIDI receive of SysEx messages

  1. Push SYSTEM once to display SYSTEM/MIDI =???
  2. Push NO or YES as needed until the display is SYSTEM/MIDI =RCV
  3. Push SYSTEM 10 times(!) to display MIDI RCV EXCL =???
  4. Push NO or YES as needed until the display is MIDI RCV EXCL =ON
  5. Push I.i/E.e once to display whatever patch is on that instrument. This is just to get out of system mode.
  6. You can now use your computer to send SysEx messages on MIDI channel 16.

Dumping a SysEx message from the K1 to your computer

  1. Push SYSTEM once to display SYSTEM/MIDI =???
  2. Push NO or YES as needed until the display is SYSTEM/MIDI =TRS
  3. Push SYSTEM 7 times(!) to display MIDI DATA DUMP =???
  4. Push NO or YES as needed until the display is MIDI DATA DUMP =PACH
  5. Push SYSTEM once to display MIDI DUMP EXEC?=
  6. Push YES twice and the dump will be performed.
  7. Push I.i/E.e once to display whatever patch is on that instrument. This is just to get out of system mode.

Preparing Amiga MidiTools for use (specific to our Amiga 1200):

  1. Open the Work disk.
  2. Open the Applications drawer.
  3. Open the MidiTools drawer.
  4. Open the SysEx program.
  5. Use Menu File Transmit / Send SysEx File
  6. Use the File Requester to select a desired syx file. We keep ours in a k1-patches directory (hit Parent twice, scroll down to select k1-patches, pick a syx file.
  7. Click OK after using the "Turning on MIDI receive of SysEx messages"
Ralph L. Vinciguerra - 2002-02-25