PSR Tutorial Monthly Report - January 2012
Summary
I hope everyone was able to enjoy a wonderful holiday season and, perhaps, use January to recuperate and get back to a normal schedule. I used the month to put together two exciting new products - a 4GB Styles USB drive and a 4GB PSR Tutorial 2012 USB drive. Details on these two products below. As usual, new songs were added to the site by the PSR Performers. In addition, Daria Rossi added some new style conversions and Michael Bedesem released an update to his MusicFinderView program. There were no additions to the Lessons section, but I have acquired the latest version of Adobe Dreamweaver, a program I use to maintain the site, and I have been working through the tutorial to learn about the latest new web features. I expect to be able to expand lesson content in the coming months and make some other improvements to the site.
Songs
We welcomed a new Performer in January, Patty Jacobsen ("AlleyCat" in the PSR Tutorial Forum). Patty is learning to master the in and outs of her PSR-S710. Twelve songs were added to Patty's jukebox in January: All I Ask Of You, Autumn Leaves, Blue Hawaii, Downtown, Gerogia On My Mind, Harbor Lights, Marie, More, O Solo Mio, Phantom Of The Opera, Piano Man, Sherry. There were 46 additional new songs added last month by ten other PSR Performers. The links in the list below will take you to that Performer's page:
- Deane Peters (Hammer) - Deane recorded several of his January gigs and added 23 songs to his MP3 collection: Allegheny Moon, Alley Cat, Autumn in New York, Autumn Leaves, Be Still My Heart, Bewitched, Blue Hawaii, Blue Moon, Blueberry Hill, Chicago, Darktown Strutter's Ball, Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes, Fascination, Harbor Lights, Have I Told You Lately, Heartaches By The Number, Is It True What They Say About Dixie, Jersey Bounce, Lavendar Blue, Let's Fall In Love, Once In A While, September In The Rain, Wheel Of Fortune.
- Del Kay - Manuela, Marina Marina, Vielleicht Kann Es Liebe Sein.
- Ernie Mulder - Baby Lets Her Blue Jeans Talk, The Bright Side Of Life, Sweet Home Chicago.
- Gloria Hanson - Adios Amigo.
- Ken Stenzel - Folsom Prison Blues.
- Lynn Rae - Don't Touch Me.
- Mark Styles - Breaking Stride (c), Can We Still Be Friends (Reggae), Old Orchard Beach (c).
- Peter Gasser - The Fool On The Hill, Goin' Out Of My Head, I've Got You Under My Skin, A Taste Of Honey, Wandrin' Star.
- Ton Anthonie - If You Were The Only Girl In The World, and an orignaly song, Just For Today. Ernie and Ton also collaborated on this song and produced a joint version.
- Torben Goldin - Country Roads, I'm Alive (w/Lilly), Music To Watch Girls By, My Heart Belongs To Daddy, When You Wish Upon A Star.
Styles
As regular visitors know, the web site hosts tens of thousands of styles for use on Yamaha arranger keyboards. Many of these styles are original styles from earlier Yamaha keyboards, others are styles from Yamaha competitor keyboards that have been converted and tuned to work on the Yamaha boards. Over the years, various members have contributed their style "collections" to the site, including performers who have provided us with their "Gig" disks styles, that is, styles tuned for use with particular songs. All of these styles, plus many more not directly available on the site, have been compiled and organized into a very large collection and are now available on a new product from the PSR Tutorial - a 4 GB Styles USB drive. The drive holds 80,000 styles in five major folders:
- A "Yamaha" folder with over 12,000 files includes the original presets from many of the mid-level and top-level arranger keyboards and from the Clavinova keyboards. These are organzed by keyboard with styles grouped in original style categories. All of these styles are also grouped by category with subfolders for individual styles that hold that particlar style from all the keyboards on which it appeared.
- A "Collections" folder with 33,000 styles mirrors the various style collections available on the site. Many of these collections have assembled some of the "best" styles available on the internet.
- A "Gig Disks" folder holds 9,600 song-named styles. These include the various gig disk collections available form the site. I also moved many of the song-named styles available in some collections to this section.
- A "Conversions" folder with about 22,000 styles holds styles that have been converted from other keyboards for use with the Yamaha as well as Yamaha keyboard styles that have been converted for use with earlier (or later) Yamaha keyboards.
- Finally, there is a "Forum" section with about 2,400 styles. I collected all the styles uploaded to the forum in the seven years, eliminated all the duplicates from what was already in the collection, and monved many of them to one of the above existing sections. What was left is found in this Forum section.
For the later Yamaha keyboards that accept USB drives, this USB can be directly plugged into your keyboard and you immediately have access to all the styles in this massive library. You also have about 700 MB remaining on the USB to store your own style favorites. This is a terrific collection and one any Yamaha owner will be delighted to have. A more complete description and ordering information is available on the 4GB USB Styles page. (Note: you can order these styles on an 8 GB USB drive as well.)
As we start 2012, new styles continue to appear on the site. Daria Rossi, who has provided us with a variety of style conversions from other keyboards, added 39 Roland EM25 styles to his collection of conversions for the PSR-3000. These styles will also work fine on later PSR and Tyros models.
Lessons
While there were no new lessons added to the site in January, all of the lessons on the site have been made available on a separate 4GB USB drive - the PSR Tutorial 2012 Lessons drive. This holds all of the Lessons, all of the components of the Music and Utility sections of the main site, as well as all of the Songs section except the PSR Performer pages and the MP3 files, although all the PSR Performer midi files are included. The Music section is where you will find the articles and projects, the Pro Clinic, all the information about fake books and the fake book song index, and the various top song lists and the complete 39-week course on Chords and Chord Progressions. The latest versions of Michael Bedesem's utilities are also all included. The 2012 USB drive i
ncludes all the files, and more, that were added to the PSR Tutorial web site in the last several years. This includes some 16,000 styles plus thousands of voice files, multipad files, and registration files. If you are starting out with your Yamaha, or even if you have had it for several years, this is an excellent resource to have available in your collection.
Users can also order the 4GB styles and the 4GB Lessons on a single 8 GB drive at a lower price than two drives ordered separately.
Utilities
Michael Bedesem released the latest update to MusicFinderView, version 2.99, which adds CVP505 support.
Site Maintenance
Since I was providing all the 5,616 midi files on the new Lessons USB, I had to make sure the full alphabetical midi index was up to date. I did that update for the site in January and put the updated index on the USB drive as well. I also used this time at the start of a new year to make sure the MP3 alphabetical song index was correct and updated to include all of the 2,037 MP3 files available at the end of the year. If you haven't discovered this index yet, you should know that all of the PSR Performer songs are listed alphabetically by title and any song can be auditioned online.
I have been using a product called Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 to maintain the web site. This is a very powerful web development tool and it would not be possible to keep up with all of the regular changes to the site without it. I skipped the CS5 version but have now upgraded to the CS5.5 version of this software. This provides more support for mobile devices, like the iPad and the iPhone, and incorporates many of the new HTML5 features. I also acquired several other Adobe products including Flash Professional, Illustrator, and PhotoShop. The Performer Jukeboxes are created using a Flash file, which I was able to import and use on the site, but never really understood how it worked. I am hoping to get a better handle on how to handle flash files and other media, such as our MP3s and video products. Needless to say, I've got a lot of "tutorials" to work through before I really understand these
programs and am able to use them. But I am hopefull that I will be able to make some significant improvements to the site as well as make the maintenance even easier.
Supporting the PSR Tutorial
Remember, you can support the PSR Tutorial by ordering any of the available CD-ROMs, DVDs, or USBs which will give you life-time "Supporter" status on the PSR Tutorial Forum. As a Supporter, you have access to the Charter Members area as well as some other benefits that only "Supporter" and "Senior" members have.
-- Joe Waters, ( jpwaters@gmail.com ), 1 February 2012