PRESERVING YOUR STYLES, MULTIPADS, AND MIDIS

Your keyboard and sound system are the probably the first things you think about protecting. You may even have backup keyboards and multiple amps and speakers. You handle them with care, buy and use covers for them and perform basic maintenance on them to keep them in good running order.

But don't forget the software that is so unique to what you do. You may spend hours, weeks or months creating the styles that make your music your trademark. You copy them to floppy...and probably make backups of those floppies which you may carry in your gig bag just in case of a tragic Floppy Disc accident.

Without worry of being neurotic, you should also have a copy of all those discs tucked away at home or in a safe place. If you have a CD burner, copy them all to CD and enjoy the comfort of knowing all your styles, pads and midis are easily retrievable from a variety of formats.

Each keyboard has features that may be unique from others, which also should be saved. As an example the PSR2000 has an operating system with 3 different file folders for styles and multi pads: 1. Presets, 2. User, 3. Floppy Disc. Should you have to recreate the setup you use all the time, and you rely on User Files that you have inputted, you will need a back up of those as well.

Like it or not, arranger keyboardists must be part librarian and archivist to avoid technical catastropies that hinder the ability to be consistently good performers.

Its the "grunt work" you do behind the scenes that make what you do on stage look so easy.