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What is the Music Finder?
The Music Finder is a system, included as part of the operating
environment in the PSR-2000/2100 and Tyros, that holds information
about individual songs (or types of songs) and provides a means
for you to modify the stored song data or add entirely new song
information. When you find, and select, a particular song
title, the Music Finder instantly sets up your keyboard to play
that song. Simply press a key and an appropriate accompaniment
style starts play at just the right tempo for that song.
You undoubtedly have already setup your PSR
to play a song yourself. You selected the style you wanted.
You either accepted the default tempo or adjusted it up or down
a bit. With the PSR's One-Touch Settings (OTS), all you needed to
do next was press one of the OTS buttons and there you had a main,
layer, and left voice all picked out for you. You were ready to
play that song.
To save yourself the trouble of having to
go through all that again, you may have saved your setting in a
registration file so that, next time, if you loaded that registration
file, it would load the style and set the tempo. You can,
alternatively, save those settings by adding a record to the Music
Finder database for that song. Once you add that record, anytime
you selected that song, the Music Finder system will load your chosen
style, adjust the tempo to what you want, and turn on the One Touch
System.
The Music Finder database in the PSR-2000/2100
has exactly the same features as the system in the CVP series and
in the Tyros. Compare the Tyros screen shown here with the
PSR-2000 screen below and you see that, except for graphical presentation,
they are identical. The description here is for the PSR-2000,
but 2100, CVP, or Tyros owners will find that everything here will
apply to the Music Finder system on their keyboards as well.
In the PSR-2000 model, Yamaha provided 450
songs in the Music Finder database where all this setup has already
been done. Just select the song title, and the correct style
and tempo are set. You just begin playing. The number of songs
included in the MF database will vary between the different models.
Of course, a "style" may be appropriate
for a lot of songs. So, if your particular song is not listed,
you might find one that is "similar" to your song and select it.
Again, everything will be set up and you can start playing.
How do you find a "similar" song? Well, you might look for
the title of a song that you know is close to what you want.
Alternatively, it may be you are playing a particular kind of song,
say one of the Big Band hits. You could look at all the songs
that were categorized as "Big Band." Or, if you wanted to
play a Latin tune, you might look at all the songs categorized as
"Latin." If you wanted to play a waltz, you might look at
all the songs that use a 3/4 time signature. Or, you may want
to play a "slow" song and so you could look at all the songs that
might have the tempo set at 70 beats or slower.
How the Music Finder Works
Basically, the Music Finder system is a standard database with
individual records (information) for different songs. The
database is integrated with the keyboard interface so it uses the
PSR-2000 screen display to send information to you, the user, and
it uses the buttons and other features on the keyboard to get directions
from you. When you select a song, it uses the features already
provided in the PSR-2000 to setup the keyboard to play that song.
Each individual record holds information
related to the music you want to play including, most importantly,
a song title, an accompaniment style (which is critical, without
a style selected, the Music Finder system wouldn't work), and a
tempo. It also holds additional information that is used to
categorize a song, such as the song genre, the beat of the song,
and "keywords" that you can make up to describe songs any way you
want. These keywords can then be used to help you select the
songs you want. For example, you might put in "AA" (representing
Academy Award) for any song in the database that won an Academy
Award. Then, if you searched the keywords for "AA," you would
be presented with a list restricted to only those songs that won
an Academy Award.
 The
information "about the song" is used to help you find the song.
The main Music Finder screen, which appears as soon as you press
the Music Finder button, is shown here. There are four tabs
at the top of the screen: ALL, FAVORITES, SEARCH1, and SEARCH2.
You initially will be looking at the ALL tab. The song titles
are shown in the first column, which is labeled MUSIC. The
second column shows the STYLE associated with a song. The
third column shows the BEAT for that song, and the fourth column
shows the TEMPO. You can use the buttons under the screen
to move up and down through the songs, but with a LOT of songs in
the database, this could be tedious. Therefore, you are provided
with additional tools to help you navigate this data by sorting
(up or down) on any column or by defining more narrow categories
to limit the number of songs you are looking at. Our lesson
on Searching will explain how to use this screen in more detail.
The basic point to remember here is that the information "about
the song" will be important in helping you find that song using
the tools built into the system.
Each song title, and all of the information
related to that song, comprises a single record in this database.
As mentioned above, Yamaha has included 450 records in the PSR-2000.
You can add more records. The PSR-1000 can hold a maximum
of 1,200 records and the PSR-2000 can hold up to 2,500 records.
Of course, if you are storing a lot of song records, you won't have
as much space left to store other information like user styles or
user registrations or user voices.
All of the records together comprise a single
Music Finder database, which is simply a single file (with a file
extension of ".MFD"). Like any other file, you can save this
file to the USER area or to the FLOPPY DISK. You can create
many different Music Finder databases and load each one as needed.
When you are loading a new Music Finder database file, you can either
replace what is currently being used with the records in the new
file or you can increase the size of the current file by adding
new records to the database. The next lesson explains in detail
the steps needed to save and load Music Finder databases.
What Music Finder Does Not Do
I mentioned earlier that you could save
your setup in a registration file or save the "style"
and "tempo" in the Music Finder file. Be aware, however,
that when you save to a registration file, you are saving virtually
every aspect of your keyboard setup. This is not true when saving
information to the Music Finder.
When you select a song in the Music Finder,
the PSR loads the related style, including the One-Touch Settings
saved with that style, and sets the tempo as indicated. You
can then start playing whenever you want. But what if the standard
style setup puts the Hah Choir in for the left-hand voice when you
would prefer to have a Grand Piano. Can you save that Grand
Piano for the Left Hand in the Music Finder database? No,
you can not. What if you've changed some of the OTS voices
and made your own registration file of voices to use with this style.
Can that registration file be saved in the Music Finder database?
No, it can not. If you are not familiar with
saving your keyboard setup in a registration file, be sure to take
a look at the lessons on Registration.
If you want to do a lot of fine-tuning of
the voices, and even the accompaniment style, you will have to save
those settings in registration files. The Music Finder will
not help you here. All it does is associate a STYLE and a
TEMPO with a particular song title. If you are happy with
the internal styles, however, that may be all you need.
Indeed, at least one professional performer
(Scott Yee) has constructed his own song parameters and stored them
in his Music Finder database. Scott finds that it is sufficient
for most of his professional appearances. Before continuing
with our Music Finder lessons, let's take a look at Scott's appraisal
of the Yamaha Music Finder.
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