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You have seen in the previous lessons
how to modify the Music Finder database that comes with your PSR.
You can change the data in any record by, for example, entering
a different style or tempo. The revised record can replace
what was there or you can save it as a new record. You can
delete records for songs that you don't ever play. You can
enter your own data in the keywords field and even replace the genre
with your own definition of genre. While you can do this,
the internal PSR capabilities are not very efficient if you want
to make a LOT of changes. But there are two external utilities available
that will help you enormously in maintaining your Music Finder database.
One is MusicFinderView,
written by Michael Bedesem The other is, in fact, a Microsoft
Excel macro, Music Finder Editor, created by Fabien Jansem,
which allows you to edit your Music Finder database. I'll
discuss MusicFinderView in this lesson and Music Finder
Editor in the next.
MusicFinderView
MusicFinderView (MFV) will allow you to examine the information
in a Music Finder database, select a subset of the records, rearrange
the records, and save the subset as a new Music Finder database
or produce a printed listing of the records with individual song
comments added. You can even modify the individual field entries
in a record.
Note that this utility is not restricted
to PSR-2000 owners. It can read MFD files from the PSR-2000
or PSR-1000, the PSR-2100/1100, the Tyros, the PSR-3000/1500, and
also files from the CVP-203/205/207/209 models. It will also
convert files from one keyboard to another. In other words,
you can read in the CVP209 MF database and save it as a PSR-2000
Music Finder database. The distinction in these various models
is primarily the number of preset styles included. The CVP209
has the most styles. All other models have fewer styles. The
conversion process selects only songs with styles that exist in
the destination keyboard.
How would you use this utility? Are
these features really useful? Let me give you some examples
of where these features would be handy. Suppose you want to
create a Music Finder database of German songs. You can use
MFV to find and select all the "German" songs in your database and
then save just those songs to a new Music Finder database.
This same capability can also be used to save your original database
without any of these German songs in it. Of course, you could
use the same techniques to make a Latin Music Finder Database or
any other subset of songs you may want to define. I have used MFV
to sort through the records in a large master database and create
individual Music Finder database for all the Fake Books shown in
our Fake Book Section. If you are a performer, you may want
to create individual databases geared toward specific audiences
-- one for retirement homes, another for weddings, yet another for
a bar or lounge gig.
In the paragraphs that follow, I'll give
you detailed instructions on how you could accomplish some of the
tasks suggested above. By the way, if you don't have the latest
version(1.64) you can download MusicFinderView
here or from the SVPWorld
site where Michael has all of his utilities posted.
Reading A Music Finder File
Download and install the MFV program. This puts the Music
Finder View Icon on your desktop. Click on that icon to launch
the program. The main MFV menu is shown below. The first
option, of course, is do load a Music Finder database file.
(You can download the original PSR-2000 MFD file -- with corrected
song names -- from our download section.)
 By
default, MusicFinderView will automatically determine the
source instrument to use in translating style numbers to style names.
Any unrecognized entries will use the style numbers instead.
You can manually set the source instrument by clicking on the Source
Instrument menu choice and picking the desired option. If,
for example, you had a file created for the CVP209, you would choose
that as the Source Instrument and then you could later save that
file as a PSR-2000 Music Finder database. Only records with
styles recognizable on the PSR-2000 would be saved in your new database.
Similarly, if you have a PSR-1000, load in these PSR-2000 Music
Finder Databases and save them as PSR-1000 Music Finder databases.
Note: the file format of the MFD is slightly different between the
various models, so a file made for the PSR-2000 will not load
directly into a CVP209 instrument; it would have to be converted
first. You can use this program to do that conversion.
Click on the Open File menu selection and
select a MFD file. We'll discuss some of the other options
shown as we progress through this tutorial. In the examples
below, I've loaded the original PSR-2000 MFD (with song names corrected).
After the file is loaded, the main screen
will show the individual records in the database. The screen shot
below shows the first 7 columns. Three additional columns show Fav,
S1, and S2.
Column 1 displays the record number
and provides a check box for selecting (or deselecting) records.
The other columns display the field data for each of the fields
shown in the column titles. You can change the order of the
columns by clicking on a column title and then "dragging"
it to a new position. You can sort the data on any particular column
by clicking on the column header. Records are sorted by the
Number column when you load the file. In the columns that
show the settings for Favorites, SEARCH1, and SEARCH2 options (not
shown above), a value of "Yes" means the record is in that group;
"No" means it is not.
Searching for Records
There are a number of things you can do with the MFD records once
you have them loaded. The various options are shown by the
buttons displayed right below the MFV menus. One of the first
you might want to do is "Search" through the database to find and
select specific records. Those records can then be viewed
together in a "Play List" view. We will start with a simple
search.
 Let's
try creating that "German" Music Finder file. To do this,
we use the Search option to automatically scan through the entire
database and select all those songs that have "german" in
the Keywords field. (Note: this will also find all records
with "Germany" in the keyword field.) To find a single record,
you could click the "Find Next" button. To find all the
relevant records, click the "Find and Check All" button.
After you click the button, you may not notice anything happening.
Click the "Close" option to put the Search dialog box
out of the way and see the results of your search. You may have
to scroll down that long list of songs before you see the results
of your search, but eventually you will notice some song titles
are, indeed, selected. All of these will have "german"
or some variant of that in the keyword field.
You can search for words or letters in the
Music (song title), Genre, or the Keywords column as well as the
Fav, S1, and S2 columns. In this example, I selected Keywords
and entered "german" in the space provided. I could have searched
through the records one at a time by selecting "Find First" or "Find
Next" and then decided whether or not to click the check box and,
therefore, select the record. However, in this case, I selected
"Find and Check All" to automatically check all the records that
meet this search criterion.
Resorting Records
 When
the search is complete, "German" records will be checked, but the
records will still be in the original numerical order. In
the screen shot here, I clicked on the "Music" column to resort
the song titles alphabetically. In this view, you can see
two of the "checked" records that the search found. I switched
to an alphabetical listing because I wanted to print out all of
these titles and I wanted to do that with the songs listed alphabetically.
Of course, I don't want to print all the records, just the checked
records. That's where the "Play List View" comes in.
Play List View
By pressing the "Play List View" button, all of the checked records
are copied and placed in the Play List. The records in this
view are renumbered so you can scroll down and see how many records
are, in fact, selected. The view shows song title, style,
time signature and tempo. It also includes a comments column.
To enter a comment, move your cursor to the record you want to comment
on, and then press the "Enter Comments" button. A small window
opens up in which you can type your comment. In the example
shown below, I am putting a comment in the first record to, in effect,
provide a "title" for this list of songs.
What else could be put in comments?
Well, suppose you are creating play list for a group of songs you
wish to perform before an audience. You can create a database
with the songs you want and then use this play list as a printed
list of your songs. For some songs, the chosen style may only
be appropriate in variations A and B. You could indicate that
in the comments. You might also indicate which, if any, of
the OTS you want to use with the song, Selecting the song
in the Music Finder database will set the style and tempo, but that's
all. The comments could remind you of other settings you may
want to make with that song.
Printing Your Playlist
You can save your Play List as a text file that can then be imported
into other programs. You can also just print the list.
If you opt to print the list, you are shown a preview of the print.
The preview for our "German" play list is shown below. To
print the list, just press the printer icon and the file is sent
to your printer. You will get 40 songs on a page. If
you were to print the full 450-record database, the listing would
require 12 pages
Creating a New MFD Database
All right, we've selected all these "German" songs and printed
out an alphabetical list of the songs. Now, let's create a
Music Finder database with just these song in it. You do that
from the main screen, so close the Play List view by pressing the
Exit menu choice. Back in the main screen, you have all the
records again with the "German" records checked.
 To
create a new Music Finder database, select the "Save As" option.
Two menu choices are presented. You can save the data to a
Delimited Text File or to a Music Finder file. Select Music
Finder file. A new window will open presenting you with the
"Save As Options."
Save As Options
Notice that here is where you
can select a different keyboard for the destination MF database.
We, of course, will keep the Target Instrument as the PSR-2000
If you had loaded the MF database from the CVP209, you could simply
re-save it selecting the PSR-2000 as the target and it would save
all the records in the 1400+ CVP209 database into a new (smaller)
database that included only those styles that existed in the PSR-2000
Notice also that you can save
ALL the records that you have loaded or "Checked Records Only."
In this case, we don't want the default "All Records"
so click the "Checked Records Only" option.
Click on "Save" and use the resulting file
dialog to select a folder for your new database and give it a name.
The MFV software creates your "German" MFD database.
Inverting Your Selection
On the top right-hand side of the main MFV screen is a Check box
Control panel. Once you have loaded your Music Finder database,
you can use these controls to check all of the records or to uncheck
all of the records. There is also a button available to "Invert"
your selection. If you want to select a handful of songs,
it is easy enough to find those songs and put a check mark by each
one. But what if you wanted to select MOST of the songs.
It would be a major pain to have to check hundreds of songs.
The Invert button can help with that task. Select the few
songs YOU DO NOT want by checking them. Then, press the "Invert"
button and it inverts your checkmarks -- everything that is checked
becomes unchecked and everything that is unchecked becomes checked.
Note: the "Number" field, new in the latest release, shows you how
many records are checked at any one time.
You would use this technique to DELETE a
lot of records you do not want. In the sample we have been
exploring here, we already have checked all the "German" records.
By pressing the Invert button we will then have everything but the
"German" records selected. If we now use the Save As option
and save the checked records to a new Music Finder database, you
will have created a new database in which all of the German records
have been deleted. If there are a number of songs you
DO NOT want in your Music Finder Database, by using MFV you can
easily identify all those records, invert the selection, and then
save all the remaining records to a new database.
Editing a Record
 The
options available under "Edit Item" allow you to Modify an individual
record, delete that record, delete all checked records, or even
add new records to your database.
 Find
the record you want to edit and then click the "Modify" button.
The Database Entry screen, shown here, is displayed. You can
now change any of these fields. The little drop-down arrow
next to the Genre field will show you all the Genre's currently
used in the database. Select one, or add a new one.
Similarly the drop-down arrow by the Style field will display the
various styles from which you can choose. Click on the Time
Signature field to select a different time signature. Enter
the tempo you want and the keywords. The keyword field can
hold up to 32 characters. Separate multiple keywords with
a comma. If you want to include this field in the Favorite
group, just click on the box to put a check mark there. When
you are done making the changes you want, click "OK". If you
don't want to make any changes, just click "Cancel".
Adding a record produces the same dialog
box, but in this case, the record is blank and you need to enter
all the data. The new record will be added to the bottom of
the Music Finder Database records.
Clearing Favorites
The final set of options allow you to clear out all checked entries
in the Favorites of SEARCH1 and SEARCH2 groups. If you load
a MFD with lots of records checked in the Favorites column and you
want to clear out all of these checked records, just press the "Fav"
button in the "Clear" section and all records will be set to "No."
In the PSR-2000 Music Finder System, you would have to edit each
record individually to change the Favorite setting from Yes to No.
With a lot of records, this would be tedious and time consuming.
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