In addition to the PSR Tutorial Lessons, there are additional resources (10,000 styles, 5,600 multipads, 6,700 voices, 6,200 midi songs, etc) to get you up and running on your Yamaha keyboard.

This collection includes, in fact, a very large web site running right on your computer and you use your own browser to explore it all. The material is drawn largely from the PSR Tutorial web site and will be familiar to regular site visitors. The organization of material is, however, a bit different from the web site. Below is a brief summary of what you will find in the five major sections of this web site.

Lessons

This section reproduces the lessons available on the PSR Tutorial web site as of September 2021. Fortunately, the basic operation of the Yamaha arranger keyboards remains based on the system introduced with the PSR-2000 and the Tyros. Whether you own an older model or the most recent PSR-S975 or Tyros5, you will benefit from the lessons provided in this collection. There are six sub-sections under Lessons:

  1. If you are a new user, you will want to begin with the Start Here section, which takes you step-by-step through the process of getting your keyboard set up and getting you playing songs.
  2. The Playing section helps you understand the basic features of your keyboard. There are six sub-sections here, each with several lessons or tutorials covering the topic:
    • Yamaha file system
    • Music Finder system
    • Using Registrations
    • Playlists
    • Expansion Packs
    • Recording songs
  3. The Tuning section helps you understand how to use the features of your keyboard to make your own version of a style or song. It includes a series of lessons in four areas:
    • Adjusting styles,
    • Creating new styles,
    • Adjusting songs, and
    • Vocal Harmony.
  4. The Workshops section offers a series of more in-depth tutorials by Heidrun Dolde that focus on the recent Tyros keyboards (Tyros3, Tyros4, and Tyros5).
  5. Finally, the FAQ section consists of Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) compiled by Michael P. Bedesem from private notes and responses to e-mail queries and forum posts.

Songs

Now that you have your keyboard, you will want songs! This section includes not only thousands of songs that you can play on your keyboard, but also information about the most popular songs and where you may find the sheet music for songs. There are five major components to the Songs section.

  1. MIDI Files - Over the years, a host of PSR Performers have contributed songs in the form of midi files. There are almost 5,800 songs (midi files) in the PSR Performer archives and they are all included in this collection. You will find the midi songs in the Files-MidiSongs folder. Songs are grouped in subfolders labeled by the artist performing the songs. The MIDI Files section provides an alphabetical index to all the midi songs. From the index, you can determine not only the performer, but also the style and tempo used for that song.
  2. XG MIDI Library - This section has several hundred MIDI files from Yamaha. These titles are normally unique to Yamaha and may not be songs you recognize so they are not included in the alphabetical index. They should be playable on any PSR or Tyros. A list of the songs is provided in this section. The actual midi files can be found in the Files-MidiSongs > Yamaha folder. Note that this notation means your should open up the Files-MidiSongs folder and then open up the Yamaha folder. Yamaha's midi songs are in various subfolders located there.
  3. Top Songs - Look here for a list of top songs as measured by a variety of yard sticks -- Top 40 hits for each year from 1930 to 1998, Top singles of the year, Top songs of the Century, Top Country Songs, Top Christmas songs, Top Waltzes plus links to additional top song internet sites.
  4. Fake Books - Fake books are an ideal source of sheet music for arranger keyboard players. In this section you find brief descriptions of most of the fake books in the U.S. market. There are a limited number of fake books in pdf format available in the Files-Fakebooks folder.
  5. FB Song Index - Fake books can have hundreds of songs, but if you're looking for that one particular song, how do you find it? Well, you just check the Fake Book Song Index. This section contains a listing of over 12,000 songs, listed alphabetically, taken from 50 different fake books. Each song shows a list of all of the fake books in which this song appears.

Styles

The Styles section has, of course, style files. But it also includes other files useful on your keyboard: music finder databases (MFDs), multi pads, registrations, and voice files. Below is a brief description of the five components of the Styles section.

  1. Styles - There are literally tens of thousands of styles available on the PSR Tutorial web site that you can freely download for your keyboard. You can also quickly build your style library by ordering one of the many available PSR Tutorial style collections. A sampling of the available styles is included in this Lessons collection. There are over 8,000 style files in the Files-Styles folder. You can load any of these styles directly in your keyboard by plugging in this USB drive. A description of the style sets included is found on the Styles page. Most of the included styles are in the newer SFF2 format used by the PSR-S910 and later and the Tyros3 and later. Styles in the "Hammer-S900" folder and the "SVP" folder will play on earlier model keyboards.
  2. MFDs - A Music Finder Database (MFD), like preset styles, is built into the firmware of your keyboard and can not be erased. However, the database can be modified, records edited, deleted, or added, and new versions of the database saved in the USER, USB, or HD areas. Additionally, new music finder databases can be loaded and can replace the current MFD. MFDs are keyboard specific. Quite a few MFDs are provided in the Files-MusicFinder folder in this collection. Descriptions of what is included are found in this MFD section.
  3. Multi Pads - The Multi pad files should work on all the various PSR and Tyros keyboards since they are, essentially, a variant of the style files. There are over 5,000 multi pads available in the Files-MultPad folder. They are described in this section, which also includes some tutorials on how to make your own multi pads.
  4. Regist - Registration files, which save a host of internal settings of the keyboard, are specific to the keyboard used to create the registration file. Many registration files are included in this collection. You will find them described here. The files themselves are located in the Files-Registration folder.
  5. Voice files may work across machines, but they may not sound exactly like they did on the original keyboard. If you want to try out different voices, you'll find 8,000 of them in the Files-Voices folder. The available voice sets are described in this section.

Learning Center

Lots of reading material here - available in five subsections.

  1. Articles - Here are some tips that are provided for new (or not so new) players.
  2. Projects - "Projects" are activities you may undertake as a PSR/Tyros owner, such as replacing a floppy disk drive, installing a hard drive, building a super-strong music rack, or building your own speaker housing for gigging.
  3. Pro Clinic - Here are a series of "discussions" from the "pros" that deal with questions any current or prospective entertainer would be interested in.
  4. Chords - How about a whole class on chords and chord progressions? Here you find a 39-week course that teach you the basics of a each chord, one per week, until you know them all!
  5. Manuals - Here are links to the Owners Manual and other documents (pdf files) for all of the latest Yamaha keyboards. There are also Service Manuals available for many Yamaha arranger keyboard models. The pdf files can be found in the Files-Manuals folder.

Utilities

There are many programs available that help Yamaha keyboard owners manage the files (midi files, style files, registration files, etc) used with their keyboard. There are several sub-section included here based on the author of the utility or utilities. Some of these utilities are on included in this collection and can be found in the Files-Utillties folder. For all utilities, links to the author's web site are provided so users can get the latest version of the utility and any additional documentation needed.

Included Files

The Lessons and informational material are accessed on your computer via these web pages. Many of the pages link to or reference files that are included in this Lessons 2017 collection. All of the included files are found in folders that begin with "Files-". Some of the "files" are meant for use on your computer, but many of them are meant for use on your Yamaha keyboard and can, in fact, be directly loaded into your keyboard using a USB drive. The available File folders are described below:

Web Interface

All of the other folders in this collection are utilized by the "web" interface you are using right now. They are all needed for the web pages to work correctly. If you received this collection on a USB drive, it is all found within a single "Lessons2021" folder. You can copy this entire Lessons2017 folder from the USB drive to your computer hard drive. It may take an hour or more to copy everything but it will give you a backup to what is on the USB. On your hard drive, opening the Lessons2017 folder and double-clicking on the index.html file launches the web interface.

If you downloaded this collection to your computer, everything is already in a "Lessons2017" folder. This will all be backed up just as are other files on your computer. (You do have a way of backing up your data, don't you?) You can, of course, also copy everything in the Lessons2017 folder to a USB drive. However, for use on your Yamaha keyboard, only some of the files included here are meant to be used on your keyboard. All of the Files-Styles, Files-MidiSongs, and Files-MultiPad folders contain files for use on your Yamaha.

MusicFinder and Registration files are keyboard specific so only some of the files found in those folders will work on your keyboard. Use the lessons to learn about these files and the utilities, if needed, to convert them for use on your keyboard.

What Next?

There is a LOT of information available in this collection. It took years to compile and it will take any new user quite some time to absorb. No need to learn everything at once. Take things one step at a time. The songs can be used immediately to see what other owners have been able to do with their Yamaha keyboards. If you do not read music, but play by ear, the midi songs may help you learn new songs. If you can read notes, the fake books will give you plenty of songs to try out. As you become comfortable with loading styles, you will enjoy exploring the wide array of additional styles included in this collection. Once you tire of the styles you have, there are always thousands more available in the various style collections. If you come across a problem that is not covered in the lessons, use the PSR Tutorial forum and post your question there. It is very likely someone else has encountered the same problem and found a solution for you. If you are into social networking, the forum is also a good place to meet other Yamaha owners and keep up with what is going on in the Yamaha keyboard world. And, of course, the main PSR Tutorial web site is constantly adding new material, new songs, new styles, new lessons. Be sure to check in there periodically to see if there is something new you would be interested in. But most of all, just have fun learning and making music with your keyboard!

Joe Waters
September 2021

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