EDITORIAL

August 2010

Well, what can I say? After my comments last time about there being little activity on the Music Store front regarding Wersi developments, what happened? It’s business as usual! We had Revision 43 released, available to download from several websites without having to register and insert a password etc. It contained some error corrections, all of which are now listed on the instrument display under Settings > Logfiles/History > OAS History. It also continued the policy of extending the virtuosity of OAS-7 by offering a new optional package, the Selector Plus. And what a package for non-Scala/Louvre owners! If that were an on-the-shelf item I reckon they’d have sold out by now, judging by the number of our members who’ve rushed to buy it. Yes, moi aussi/ich auch! Perhaps it was the thought of the price increase at the end of July (or is it middle of August? - I still haven’t heard back!). But that wouldn’t be important if the software weren’t a prized item. Who wouldn’t want to have the coveted number of Selectors from the Scala?

At the time of the R43 release and since, this website has seen the greatest number of hits ever - approximately 350 per week, which is 100 more than the previous record. It was a hectic time and I must thank Bill Gray for his assistance. At least we managed to keep you informed, in English, of what Selector Plus is all about and I see that my translation of the instruction booklet has now also appeared on another site. I received a communication from Torsten Reichold and am pleased to inform you that both he and Uli Wildhack are continuing to develop the OpenArt System in conjunction with Music Store. We can therefore look forward to further revisions and optional packages in the future.

As if to coincide with all that, we have a bumper issue for you this time (it is coincidence!). As usual, the list of new items with direct links to them is on our Members’ Home Page, but here is a short summary without links.

Bill Gray has been busy producing the definitive guide to using external MIDI equipment with a Wersi instrument. If you’ve wanted to try out a MIDI arrangement but have been puzzled by those Wersi MIDI screens, this article will dispel all that. He gives many examples of connecting up a variety of equipment to an Abacus and how to set the screens on the display to provide the desired outcome. I’m sure Bill would welcome a dialogue about his article so send in your questions and I’ll put them on our Forum for Bill to respond.

David Dunlap, our performer on YouTube with his OpenArt Orchestra (Scala), has his first article now available. In this he explains exactly how he set up no fewer than seven Total Presets, all for one piece of music available to watch on YouTube. He uses Ken’s Templates to display the settings of each Preset and also, as a unique feature, gives the video time-line references for each Total Preset change. You can therefore watch the video and read about the changes happening as they occur. If you have any questions about David’s Total Presets, I’m sure he would be pleased to answer them so send them in and I’ll place them on our Forum for David to respond.

You may remember last time that I said I’d be pruning and adjusting this website over the coming months and that you may spot some “peculiarities” on the site from time to time because of this. Perhaps a “Danger : Man at Work” sign should have appeared. Anyway, how many of you spotted the most obvious peculiarity? Yes, the side navigation bar sometimes had a link to the Uploads page and sometimes had a link to a Downloads Summary page instead, depending upon which page you were on at the time. I’m sure curiosity would have invited you to try the Downloads Summary link but you would have been thwarted by an error message. Today, you’ll find that has been corrected and you can now visit our Downloads Summary page which replaces the previous Uploads page. On that page are three panels listing all the available downloads on site in alphabetical order. There’s one panel for Articles to read, one for sound files to listen to on your computer and one for things like Total Preset files, Style files etc which you can import into your Wersi instrument once you’ve downloaded them. The heading for each item is a link to the page on this website from where you can download the item. I hope this new page, in conjunction with our Site Index page, will help in finding items on the site.

I may have explained my saga about Mapping at some time; on the other hand, I may not have. It’s not particularly interesting: just a nasty experience I had within one week of taking delivery of my Verona when I was trying to add sounds to the sound buttons and ended up with an error message on screen. I haven’t attempted any such adventure since! Nearly five years on and I decided it was time to face my demons and the result is a series of two articles about Mapping. The first one is available now and looks at the basic process for adding to and/or changing the User Mappings provided by Wersi as a default set. By no means are all available sounds mapped by this User set, even without considering any optional packages you may have which definitely won’t be mapped unless you have done it yourself. If you are totally au fait with the process, these articles won’t be of any interest to you. But if you’ve not done any mapping yourself you may find them useful. The second article will appear next time and will look at adding further Mapping Presets and how they are of use in Total Presets.

I think that will suffice for now. The website will continue to be adjusted in the coming months, possibly giving rise to some peculiarities from time to time. Do let me know if you spot any anomalies with the website.

Breaking news is that Peter Armitage’s Wersi-UK website is now up and running. You will find a link to it on our Links page.

Happy playing, and do join me in a celebration on 12th September when WersiClub International will be three years old.

Colin

August 2010

25 July 2010

Bert Kaempfert Medley : the latest video from David Dunlap. It’s a cracker!

24 July 2010

R43: Xenios, EX-1 and Xenios Owners. If you have noticed a problem after loading R43, there is a patch available on this site. The words Patch Installer 220710 on the right of the table on that page are the link to download the patch. Apparently it can be installed in the same way as an update CD, but that will be at your own risk.

19 July 2010

Latest R43 Update: There are actually 15 switch-on trials of Selector Plus and several other Optional Packages. I have just heard from Torsten. There is a further development which has occurred in R43. Touch Settings > Logfiles/History > OAS History. All the changes which are incorporated within R43 are listed there.

17 July 2010

Lay All Your Love On Me is the latest video on YouTube from David Dunlap. It’s fantastic!

NB: The Wersi Information Sheet about the Selector Plus software states that the price will increase to €390 after 14 August 2010. Confusingly the Music Store website states that the price will increase after 30 July! I have asked Music Store for confirmation of the correct date. Watch this space!

15 July 2010

For UK Wersi owners, Peter Armitage has told us that he is now able to supply all Wersi Activation Codes for Optional Packages. There will be a £10 surcharge on each transaction to cover bank transfers.

4 July 2010

A Report from Lloyd Erickson about the recent Bill Horn Show in the USA is now to be found in our Wersi-USA Room.

2 July 2010

Jeff Ormerod has provided some Total Presets for Church Organs and Theatre Organs. These are available to download in PDF format, using Ken’s TP Templates, from our UK.Focus site via this link:

Jeff Ormerod’s Organ Total Presets

16 June 2010

Service for WERSI OpenArt Instruments

After the takeover of Wersi, the Music Store Company will naturally guarantee a comprehensive service for the OpenArt instruments.

This service arrangement applies to the following instruments:

IKARUS, Expander EX1, ABACUS, APOLLO, VERONA, CD-OAS Reconstructions, SCALA, LOUVRE and naturally the new PEGASUS WING.

Service for older products has been secured nationwide from a third-party.

Please apply to the following for service to the above-named instruments:

There then follows three addresses within Germany:

Wersi-Studio Hochrein (Central Germany)

Wersi-Studio Ruhrgebiet (North-West Germany)

Wersi-Studio Halsenbach (West Germany), at:

Freddy Schell

Industriestrasse 1

56283 Halsenbach

Replay-serviceteam@online.de

halsenbach@wersi.net

0171/7161310

Service Partner UK

Peter Armitage

10 Long Lane

Southowram

Halifax

HX3 9NU

Wersi.uk.service@blueyonder.co.uk

1422 359603

7901 966060

This service also applies to ordering CDs or a DVD for the latest software update. We recommend using the WERSI download facility for those updates.

[Thanks to Bill Gray for providing the link to the original German Release]