Hi Everybody. OK, I've been spending a good amount of time lately playing & experimenting around with and customizing my PSR2000 to meet my specific live performance requirements. The 2000 really offers a lot of flexiblity to configure it to your individual tastes. In the process of my exploration, I have discovered a couple of things that aren't covered in the owner's maunal. I thought you guys might like to hear how I setup my keyboard, as well as let you in on a few tips that I discovered thru trial and error. I spend a few days trying to figure out the the most efficient way to organize and manage song/style data. The PSR2000 unfortunately has only 580kb of total onboard user storage space. This amount only holds about 20 styles so I immediately realized that storing a lot of customized styles is out of the question. Well, here's my solution to the PSR2000's small 580kb storage space.

I discovered that the best way to configure the PSR2000 is to store your song configurations in the the Music Finder database. It will hold up to 2500 song file records, certainly sufficient to meet the demands of any pro performing artist. I took the song files which came with the keyboard and saved them to the favorites list (about 150 of the 450 total). I then created a custom Registration Bank file of some of my favorite instrument voice setups. On the PSR2000 I typically play in fingered mode (full chord recognition including rootless chords) in split mode with the split at F#2. I nearly always have BOTH the Left and Main voice parts activiated. This way, my left hand comping rhythm will always be heard as well as played, while the right hand plays the same or another instrument voice. If both Left and Main are set to acoustic piano, this gives me the opportunity to play right hand solos down to and including the SAME octave the left hand (left of split point) plays. This really is a cool device which allow you to create some interesting sounding closed harmonies and contrapuntal lines (in the same octave) between both hands . Ok, back to setting up those custom instrument files. My goal is to be able to play my custom instrument voicing setups along with the pre-configured Music Finder song file styles without having to create more USER files. To do this, I needed to create a Registstration Bank setup which ONLY saves my customized select Main, Layer & Left instrument voices, and then use the Registsration Memory's freeze function to freeze the parts I don't want changed when using this Registration Memory with one of Yamaha's pre-arranged factory styles. Thru all this, I discovered something rather surprising. Apparently, the Main & Layered voice parts are saved in a different place than the Left voice part. The Main & Layered voices are stored as a 'voice' parameter while the Left voice is stored as part of the 'style' itself. This is important to know because when configuring my custom Registration Memory's 'instrument voice setup' and wanting to store the Left Part voice configuration as well, both the 'style' and 'voice' parameters need to be checked in the Registration Memory save window. Before playing a Music Finder song file, you first need to load & activate this custom Registsration and then hit the Freeze button. In setting up the freeze parameters, I check the 'style' which in effect locks in the LEFT part instrument(s) I have set up in Registration Memory. Now I can select any Music Finder song and be able to either play the preset instrument voices (OTS: 1-4) or switch to my custom instrument setups (Reg 1-8). If you want to allow the LEFT part to sound as it was setup in OTS, just uncheck the 'style' box in the Freeze parameters setup window. Using this setup method, I only need a few custom 'instrument setup' registration banks and thus save a lot valuable USER storage space for loading a few of those dynamite 'custom styles'. With this, I already have over 150 customized songs at my fingertips (via Music Finder's powerful search criteria). I'll be quickly adding more in the days ahead. In addition to this, I also use the Yamaha MFC10 10 pedal foot controller to trigger the : Main A,B,C,D parts (with optional fills), intros (2), endings (2), and start/stop. Though the MFC10 is a bit large, it's indispensible in allowing you to easily add spontaneous fills at key spots in a song. This just is not easily possible to do this with your hand (finger) while playing (with both hands) with the Left part sound on (with left hold off). I only wished the multi-pads could be triggered from a foot pedal too. Believe me, I've let Yamaha know about my disappointment over this. Still, I continue to juggle playing with hitting the multi-pad button every now and then to create a spontaneous manual cymbal or tom hit now and then. It really gives the performance the added realism which makes music magical. BTW, I forgot to mention, the MFC10 foot controller also has cool lights which illuminate the foot pedal numbers: easy to see on stage.

Lastly, I had previously complained that the ACMP & Sync Start/Stop were not activiated (red light off) at startup. Funny, now everytime I startup the keyboard, they're ON now. I had thought there was no way to program the status of these buttons at startup. Am I was wrong? Anybody have any idea where these startup parameters are stored? I'm baffled now.

OK, I've spilled the beans about how I use the PSR2000, now I'm waiting to hear how others of you set your's up to best meet YOUR playing requirements.

- Scott
http://scottyee.com

Very interesting Scott.
I've just been sort of turning mine on, selecting a style and playing it.
Maybe I was waiting for you to spend all that time figuring out the details!
I never used the Music Finder on the 9000, but I think that with the 2000 it will be better than fooling with so many Registrations.
Now to find the time. I'm leaving again in a few minutes and will be back home either late Thursday or Friday.
I will have some time to play with the 2000 in my motel room tonight, unless I decide to do something silly, such as sleep.
DonM

Scott, Great information. I have been working with the PSR2000 for over 3 weeks now and was trying to determine how I was going to set this up for live performance. I'm glad I waited. The MFD looks like the way to go. Thanks

Rick L>

I can so relate to your post about just turning it on and playing Don. That's basically what I've done with my wk8. I really admire people like Scott though who can dig in and find out things about a keyboard that the designers probably didn't know. Keep up the great work Scott. If I ever get a psr2000 I might not even need the owners manual.

You hardly need the owners manual with the 2000. But I was already used to the Yamaha way of doing things.
I have set up a couple of Regisistration Banks, but they operate a little differently than the 9000 did, so I really think Scott's method might be the best for me.
It would be a little quicker than selecting a style, then voices, then tempo, etc.
Usually when I get a new keyboard, I make myself play it without registration so that I'll learn more about it.
Later,
Don

As an entertainer, I like to have song 'templates' ready to go at the 'drop of the hat'. This is particularly important for a tightly crafted set or in a piano bar type situation when there are lots of audience requests. You want to keep the audience focussed. There is nothing worse than unexpected down time, which will quickly kill the energy of the room. Our job as entertainer/musicians is not only to orchestrate the music, but orchestrate the mood of the room as well.

Gee, I am printing all these messages out from Scott and others so I can try some of this stuff out!

I have been reading the manual and it doesn't sound as interesting as Scotts tricks and tips!

I should be getting my PSR2000 tomorrow! I hope! If I am even able to turn it on a play a style when I get it, I will be
happy!

-Linda


[This message has been edited by LindaFus (edited 11-28-2001).]

Thanks for Sharing your findings Scotty. I have ordered a PRS 2000, based largely on this groups comments about it.

I made the leap from a PSR 5700 to a 9000 two years ago and was thrilled with it, (until my back went out). Now I use the 740, keeping the 9000 for those "special jobs" when I can afford a roady or I know there is going to be some "muscle" present.

With all the holiday gigs in progress now, learning the 2000 may have to be put on a back burner...but I am really looking forward to it.

Now... where the heck is that UPS truck?

Scott

I was interested in one of your comments about being able to play with the right hand down below the split point without anything weird happening. I had been curious as to how a piano player could access that important octave from middle C down without triggering accompaniment changes.

I had a question about this: If you played in split mode and transposed the upper section down an octave - but used the same sound sample for both sides - #1 - could you do that and #2 what would happen if you were holding a note (as part of a chord) in the left hand and ended up restriking the same note in the right hand (because of the transposing) - would it continue as part of the sustained note or register for only as long as you held it down??

thanks
Mike H

Mike: Ok, here's the scoop -

With the split point set at F#2. I set the octave pitch of G2 (the note right of the split point) to begin at the same octave pitch as the the note G1 (left sound). This thus lets me play in the same octave pitch range in BOTH the right and left hands.

With my left hand (fingered mode: full chord recognition of 3 notes or more), I first trigger the auto-accomp. chord, and then can play melodic fills (either single note or two note intervals). In fingered mode you can play any 1 or 2 note voicings in the auto accomp area and it will NOT change the auto acoomp. harmony. Because the right of split lowest octave notes are the same pitch as the notes of the left hand part, you can play 1 or 2 note fills in the left hand while playing other notes with the same octave pitches, but using your right hand playing in the right of split area. This allows you to create harmonic and melodic ideas difficult to achieve otherwise. I hope this makes sense.

The right hand part, playing the same note pitch as one of the notes in the left auto-accomp part (because of transpoing), does NOT affect or register the auto-accompaniment in any way, even if the pitch is the same.

Scott - thanks - but that wasn't quite what I was trying to ask - I know it won't trigger the accompaniment because that is governed by the split point - But!! - what happens in my example when your left hand is also sounding the same piano sound as the right hand - (giving you a full piano sound with both hands as well as triggering acc. in the left)??

Example - you are holding a chord down (EABD) in the left hand and the right hand (transposed down an octave) plays one of those notes as a passing note in an improv - Does it come out as a sustained note which has been restruck?

Mike H

Man, leave it to Scott to get a new toy that many of us already have, and within a coupla days know more about it than we, and probably the Yamaha programming technicians themselves, do!

I personally find the factory manual lacking, especially for someone like me who uses Arr/KBs mostly to record demos. I don't have to (or Get to, actually) play around with all the features and find out neat stuff for myself.

Scott, I would like to one day see a manual, written in plain English, that displays headings for what operation is desired, and then a step-by-step, "First, turn on the keyboard by pressing red button. Then...", etc., set of instructions. Sort of a "Yamaha PSR2000 For Dummies" edition. Heck, I'd BUY a copy if you would only write it!

And Thanks for the "ACMP always on at startup" tip in your follow-up post. Really useful!


------------------
Regards and Aloha,

Charlie
http://artists2.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Wong_Songs/index-1.html

As Scott points out in his initial posting, the many options (and restrictions) of the PSR2000 require users to think about not only how to play the keyboard, but also how to organize their arranger data. Let me add some more options users may find useful.

When you have a "song" just the way you like it, the arrangement package consists of a particular song title, an accompaniment style and associated settings, and various instruments selected to play the main voices, together (main, layer, left) and in sequence (OTS, R1-8, Rhythm A, B, C, D).

You can devise organization schemes based on any of the main parts above, song title, style, key instruments.

If you want to focus on the song, you can save all your registration settings as a registration file named after the song. If you save this on a floppy, you can put 200-300 songs on a single disk, complete with whatever folder scheme you want to use to find the songs. If there are a few fake books you play from, you could have a disk for each book, then as you play the songs in the book, save the settings you want under the song name and they are always available when you play the song again. It might take only 2 or 3 registration entries to define the song the way you want it, but you could also consider setting up two or three styles that could be used to play that song and save all the settings in the one song file.

As another alternative, consider a style focus. I happen to love the Lounge Piano style (unfortunately not preset in the PSR2000, but easily obtained from floppy and stored in user area.) That particular style can be used with a lot of different songs. So, I use the 8 registrations to set up a variety of solo instruments, and even left hand accompaniment (some with Grand Piano, some with Nylon Guitar, which sounds great as an accompaniment on the 2000). I can then bringup this registration, freeze either the piano left hand or nylon left hand, and have lots of solo instruments (the 8 reg settings plus the 4 OTS settings) that can be used with this style.

Style type (tempo) can also be used. Last night I set up an 8-Beat (100-120) registration set. A lot of songs will fit into this tempo range and there are a variety of styles available in the 2000 that I can put in the registrations. When I come across a song in this tempo range, I can pull up this reg file and choose any of the styles, freeze it, and then use any of the solo instruments set up in the 8 reg slots plus the OTS settings. In picking main instruments to go in a style registration slot, I try and choose an instrument that is not in one of the 4 OTS settings to maximize the choices available.

Finally, there is the favorite settings and instruments suggested by Scott. Using the Music Finder Database, pick your song (which will have the tempo and style set in the MFD) and then freeze that sytle and use any of the instruments you want from your favorite settings.

As the Music Finder Database grows, it can be more difficult to find songs. You can use the keyword entry to help. For example, if you put in a code that represents a music book (I use UFB for Ultimate Fake Book - fewer letters are always preferable), you can search on that keyword to find all the songs in that book that you have defined in the MFD.

I'm not sure which method, if any, will prove most useful for me over time. I thought saving registrations by song, could be useful, particularly since a floppy can hold so many songs. However, it's a pain to set everything up for any song, particularly when so many songs can share the same basic environment. So, perhaps defining a few style/tempo related settings may be sufficient to support hundreds of possible songs. I enjoy flipping through my books playing song after song a lot more than fussing over exactly what instruments to be using.

Looking forward to hearing other ideas from users...
Joe

I own a PSR2000, but have not even scratched the surface of what it can do. I am totally lost when it comes to saving styles/sounds in the registration memory. Everytime I save something there and shut off the keyboard, I lose all the settings. I feel kinda dumb! As Mr. Bulk has stated, I wish there WERE a "PSR2000 For Dummies" available for rookies like myself. I've been a keyboardist for 29 years, but am not so technically sound, so I could use all the help I can get! Scottyee, feel like authoring such a manual?? LOL

Cam8neel: You just need to SAVE your Registration Memory Bank to User Memory or onto floppy disk. Once you do that, you can later call up that specific Registration Bank file and it will bring up all your customized settings. A dummies book?! hmmm. That's an idea . . . in the works! BTW, I'm also available for telephone consulting. Email me if you're interested. - Scott
http://scottyee.com

Joe,
I love that Lounge Piano style too. So much, that I sent it to Scott unsolicited.
Don

If any is interested, I prepared an Excel spread sheet that displays all the preset PSR2000 styles sorted by tempo. A great aid when you want to see what presets are close to a particular tempo you may want to use with a song. I uploaded it to the Yamaha PSR-Styles Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yamaha-psr-styles/files/
Note: I tried saving the Excel spreadsheet as an HTML file and then inserting the source code here. I guess it didn't work, because the resulting htm version did not show up, the source did. But I was able to send that page to an area I have on my web site, so here is a link to the table viewable through your browser:
http://pages.prodigy.net/watersj/Yamaha2K/2KStyleTempo.htm

[This message has been edited by Joe Waters (edited 11-29-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Joe Waters (edited 11-29-2001).]

My PSR2000 has not arrived yet, so this question may be a little pre-mature. But, her goes: If you have some of your presets for individual songs loaded on a floppies, can you call up one of the presets, start playing and change floppies mid song in order to get into another song quickly or does that kill the style when you pull the floppy?

Bsharp,
If you are at all familiar with Windows, you can view the working part of the PSR2K like the clip board. When you load a style, from built-in presets or user ram or floppy disk, it is copied to this working area. You can change whatever parameters you want. You can take out one floppy and put in another. That doesn't affect your working area settings. Of course, if you LOAD a new style from the new floppy, that will replace the style that was in your working area.


If you want to SAVE any of your settings, you have to move them from the working area in RAM to some more permanent storage. You save your settings in a registration file. One file can hold 8 different settings and you can be working with all 8 at the same time. to SAVE your registration file permanently, you need to move it to the User area in RAM (limited space available) or to a floppy (lots of space available). In the case you mentioned, you could load the settings for a song, start playing that song or adjusting it as you see fit. Any time you want, you can remove the floppy and put in another floppy. After all, the information from the first floppy has been loaded and is now in the keyboard working area. Nothing happens to the song you loaded until you choose to replace it with something from the new floppy.



[This message has been edited by Joe Waters (edited 11-29-2001).]

DonM: MANY Thanks for sharing the 9000 'Lounge Piano' style. Great brushes. I used it on Misty at my happy hour gig tonight and it really put the folks in a romantic mood with the rain lightly hitting the window along with the cozy warm fireplace going. BTW, the PSR9000 'Midnight Swing' is great too. I deleted the piano accomp part (chord2) though, cause I play in all the piano stuff myself. I increased the tempo to 120 and it's now the PERFECT style for 'Fever', finger snaps and all. I also don't use the style's intros and endings as I prefer to play my own. I also created and stored custom instrument (voice) setups for this style in OTS. The cool thing is that OTS settings are stored within the style itself, so that way you can later load the style from floppy and won't need to load a separate registration file because all the customized settings are now built into the style along with instrument setups (OTS 1-4). BTW, before you can edit/change a style along with OTS settings, you need to first store the original style in PSR2000 USER Memory. After editing and re-saving the style to USER memory, then you can re-save this newly created style to floppy disk.

I know you guys may think this is crazy, but I think the Yamaha brand name on the keyboard seems to impress a some in the audience. I guess because Yamaha is well known for their acoustic grands too. I don't know if you knew this, but I actually had to cover up the Technics name on my KN5000 with my own logo name because some club owner thought it wasn't impressive enough for his la de da club. Go Figure !

Joe: Thanks for your excellent explanation of the many ways you can configure the PSR2000 for song/file organization. I think I've worked out a good system that works for me. I store the bulk on my songs which use the internal styles, in the Music Finder. I store customized edited styles (along with OTS settings) on floppy because they load so quickly and don't require registration memory files either. I also created a few Registration Memory 'Instrument Setups' (1-8): one for each specific genre of music: Jazz Lounge, Pop/Rock, Country, etc. I also created a separate folder for registrations dedicated to a 'specific' song. I think once you decide on and then follow an organized approach, it just makes it a lot easier now to let your creative juices flow and start MAKING MUSIC ! Hey, that's what this is all about, right?

[This message has been edited by Scottyee (edited 11-29-2001).]

Thanks Scott,
I'm gonna organize mine . . . someday.
Also my garage, my music, my life, etc.
DonM

Don, I look at it this way. Music is a TOUGH way to make a living. You always have to stay one step ahead of the competition. I feel my brain is constantly jumping back and forth between being totally spontaneous & creative (when performing) and then being overly analytical when I get immersed in the technical side of things. I guess I should strive for a happy medium, but that's too dull for me

Thanks to Joe for the 1) the explaining about floppy changes... and 2) for the file on PSR2000 styles and tempos.

I can't wait to get my hands on the 2000.

Hey Scott,

I am going to HOLD you to that (in the works) "Yamaha PSR2000 For Dummies" manual!

And charge me what you will -- I'll pay it!


------------------
Regards and Aloha,

Charlie
http://artists2.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Wong_Songs/index-1.html

Amen, Brother! Amen!!

It's a DEAL!
Now I've just got to find the time to devote to this new project amidst all the holiday work (our busiest time of year) coming up.

Great! Now, remember, Scott. "For Dummies" is the key phrase here, speaking for myself at least!