Sevenator generates a single voice or a "cartridge" of 32 patches for the Yamaha DX7 as a bulk dump file in MIDI System Exclusive format. You can use it to generate patches for the original DX7 synthesizer and also emulations and/or clones, such as

• Arturia DX7 V,
• Native Instruments FM8,
• Dexed
• Plogue Chipsynth OPS7
• and many others

The KORG opsix can also import DX7 bulk dump files by MIDI.

Sevenator implements the Yamaha DX7 patch file data model, so you can create programs that generate patches in any way you can think of. For example, you can randomize every parameter, but you will get better results if you select a subset of the parameters to randomize.

Currently Sevenator generates either a single voice (initialized to factory defaults, or completely random) or a "cartridge" with the same 32 patches repeated over, with some random envelopes, but it may get some patch generation methods of its own as it is developed.

The DX7 data model and its API have been split into a dedicated package sevenate-rs, so Sevenator is just one possible client of the API.

Sevenator is written in Rust. You can use the Rust development tools to make an executable version for your (supported) operating system. See the Rust home page for details about installation.

Clone the source code from the Git repository into a subdirectory, change to that subdirectory, and then issue the command

cargo build

If you want to make a release build (smaller, no debug information included), use

cargo build --release

You will find the resulting executable in the target/ subdirectory, under debug or release.

To run Sevenator, either copy the executable to a directory of your choice, or issue the command

cargo run

Sevenator will show you its command line options.

For example, to convert a Yamaha DX7 cartridge in MIDI System Exclusive format to the XML format you use the make-xml subcommand. To show its options, use

sevenator help make-xml

You should see the following:

Usage: sevenator make-xml --input-file <INPUT_FILE> --output-file <OUTPUT_FILE>

Options:
  -i, --input-file <INPUT_FILE>    
  -o, --output-file <OUTPUT_FILE>  
  -h, --help                       Print help

So, for example, to convert the original ROM 1A cartridge of the Yamaha DX7 to the XML format, use the command

sevenator make-xml --input-file ROM1A.SYX --output-file rom1a.xml

The Yamaha DX7 patch format is well documented in the DX7 Owner's Manual, available online in the Yamaha Manual Library. A description of the packed format can be found in the Dexed documentation.

The Yamaha DX7 cartridge data is 4,096 bytes long (not counting the System Exclusive initiator and terminator, and the dump header, which bring it up to 4,104 bytes). It contains packed data for 32 voices, so the data for one voice is 128 bytes. An unpacked single voice is 155 bytes (with SysEx header 163 bytes).

The Yamaha TX802 voice edit buffer accepts single voices in DX7 format.

The voices and cartridges have an XML Schema definition (subject to change). To validate an XML document, use xmllint like so:

xmllint --xinclude --schema cartridge.xsd testcartridge.xml

This will process the XInclude elements first, and then validate the result against the XML Schema.

See also XML Parsing in Rust.