PSR Function Demos

On this DEMO screen, if you select AUTO (by pressing button [8B]), the PSR will play music randomly in the background while it displays information about each of the 10 functions shown on page 1 and the 5 functions shown on page 2.  Alternatively, you can select any of the functions by pressing the corresponding lettered key and read about that function while music plays in the background.  These function descriptions provide some interesting and informative descriptions of capabilities available in your keyboard, although occasionally the text may overstate the features a bit.  That screen is not always the most convenient thing to read, particularly for old tired eyes like mine, so I have repeated the content on a separate PSR Functions page, which follows this page, for your convenience. The functions, and their descriptions, on the PSR-2100 are identical to those listed for the PSR-2000. If you glance through that list of functions in the PSR-2100, you can appreciate a comment I recently received.  Paul Beck. a professional musician, commenting on the difficult of teaching students how to play an arranger keyboard, observed, "The whole subject is like eating an elephant. It has to be done a bite at a time or you choke on it."

Voice Demos

The VOICE tab in the DEMO screen shows 13 voices, each of which is demonstrated by featuring the instrument in a song. The voices demonstrated include 9 Sweet! voices , Live! Strings, Cool! Electric Guitar, Nylon Guitar and Organ Flutes.  (The voice demos on the PSR-2000 are all the same, except the PSR-2000 does not have demos for the first four Sweet! voices, which are not on the PSR-2000.)

Note: if you do not currently have a PSR-2100 and would like to hear some of the PSR-2100 voices, you can visit YamahaPK Club where voice and style demos are available.

Style Demos

The final tab, STYLE, shows 11 songs that demonstrate preset styles. The styles demonstrated, and their parent style categories, are shown in the table below. Those in blue are not included in the PSR-2000 Style demos.

Internal Demo Songs

All of these demonstration "songs" are stored in your keyboard as "PRESET" songs.  From the MAIN screen, simply press [A] to go to the SONG screen. Note that this format is just like the DEMO screen. In this case, the three "tabs" are PRESET, USER, and FLOPPY DISK. These represent places where song files can be stored and recalled. The PRESET area is that area of your keyboard where all the internal songs (and styles and voices) are stored. In the initial screen, shown here, you see three "folders" labeled Voice, Style, and Function. Each folder holds the "songs" that were used as demonstrations in these three areas. Press the corresponding button by any of the three folders and you will see the songs in that folder.

You can call up any song from the PRESET area, but you can not store anything new here. You can also COPY anything from this area to another area. If you examine the options shown at the bottom of the SONG screen, you see that the only one available to you is the COPY option. You can COPY one of these internal songs to the USER area, but Yamaha has put a protection mechanism in the song that prevents you being able to COPY it to a FLOPPY DISK. If you create a song yourself, of course, you can store it in the USER area or on a FLOPPY DISK. Any of YOUR songs stored in the USER area can be copied to a FLOPPY DISK.

Marketing Value versus Long-term Utility

One could easily see how a salesman could take advantage of these demos. They show off what the PSR-2100 is capable of doing -- although what it takes to actually make your own songs sound like the demos, well, that's another story.  And a new owner, may find this useful as well, but one can only play these songs so many times before they lose their vitality.  If this information had been provided on a floppy disk, the capabilities of the instrument could still have been demonstrated but these demos would then have not taken up any of the precious internal memory in the keyboard.  The space occupied could have been used to allow more or better preset voices and/or styles.  Those would have represented extra value to the PSR owner that would last as long as the PSR was played.  The value of these demos, to the owner, would seem to diminish dramatically as soon as the PSR is purchased and taken out of the showroom