Music Finder

How about if YOU pick the song, and the PSR picks the style, the tempo, and the voices -- everything you need to just start playing?

Note: I refer to the PSR-2000 here, but the other models (PSR-2100, PSR-3000, Tyros, Tyros2, and PSRS-900) operate the same way although they each have a different number of available internal styles. Note also that Music Finder database files are keyboard specific.

Introduction

Sure, you can set your keyboard up just the way you want. But sometimes, you may prefer to just sit down and play some songs without having to spend a lot of time pushing all those buttons. The great flexibility of the PSR-2000 is also, sometimes, a disadvantage. If you want to play a song with automatic accompaniment, you have to select a style and the PSR-2000 has 181 different preset styles to select from. All of those 181 styles aren't going to be appropriate for the song you want to play, but many may work just fine. The trick is finding an style that goes with the song you want to play. And, once you've found a style, you may find that you need to adjust the preset tempo a little faster or a little slower for the song you want to play.

If you are like the typical new keyboard owner, it is going to be pretty hard to quickly hone in on a style that is 'just right." To do that, you would have to know what all the styles sound like, not only at their default tempo, but also at tempos that are slower or faster. And every style has four different variations that expand the possibilities even further. You will, in time, become more and more familiar with what is available in your keyboard, but there simply is no substitute for experience. It simply will take time to get a good feel for the style that you would want to use.

But, while you are learning, the PSR-2000 had a very handy tool that will help you become familiar with the styles and the keyboard. It is called the MUSIC FINDER and this section of the PSR-Tutorials explains how you can use it to make your playing even more fun. To keep things in bite-sized pieces, there are six lessons in this section. Here's a brief overview of each lesson:

The Music Finder can be a great tool for some people. In this lesson, I'll provide a general description of what the Music Finder feature is and what it can do for you. I'll also note what it does not do. While some users will find this a terrific feature, others will be able to play on happily and never use it at all.

The information in the Music Finder is stored in a "file" like much of the information you use in the PSR-2000. You can have many Music Finder database files and you can save or load a file whenever you want. This is very good because the first thing you will want to do is REPLACE the file that Yamaha has provided. I'll show you how to do that in this section.

The strength of this system depends on whether you can easily find a particular song. If it takes longer to find the song than to set up your keyboard, you wouldn't find the system to be much of a benefit. Here, I'll explain how to use the main Music Finder screen and how to narrow down the available song list to make your searching easier.

The information in the Music Finder database is not locked in concrete. You can change the information stored there for any of the songs. You can also add new records for songs you want added to "your" Music Finder database. In fact, you can make a number of different Music Finder databases and load whichever one you want when you need it. This lesson explains how to do alll this.

While editing the record data and adding new records can be done on your PSR-2000, direct keyboard editing is most appropriate for making minor changes or adding an individual record. For major changes, you will want to save your Music Finder database on a floppy disk and then take that file to your personal computer and make changes there. There are a number of utilities to help you do this. Two of these utilities are discussed in this lesson.

Finally, for those PSR-2000 owners who read music and play from fake books, I have prepared a special bonus. I have constructed a Music Finder database that is four times as large as the original with about 2,000 records. In addition, the keyword field in this database holds abbreviations for all of the fake books in which any particular song may appear. Thus, you can search on that keyword field and create fake-book specific search results. It's all explained in this section.

There are [BACK] and [NEXT] buttons at the top and bottom of each of these lesson pages. Clicking on these buttons will take you directly to the Previous or Next lesson in this series. The Music Finder button at the top left of each page, takes you back to this Music Finder Home page. The navigator on the left side of each page can be used to jump directly to any of the lessons available in the Music Finder section. As with the other lessons, the major lesson components are always available at the top of each page. At the bottom of each page, you'll also find [BACK] and [NEXT] buttons as well as quick links to any of the major Lesson sections.