John,

In many ways, my setup is similar to Ed's. I use the laptop primarily for lyrics. The files are stored in a single folder and stored by song title. Therefore, by merely pressing the first letter of the title, the PC takes me to the first song in that letter.

Now, Ed using registrations to access his song settings, where I mainly use the Music Finder Directory. However, I also use about 300 registrations - depending upon the song.

In order to use registrations and have everything on a single, scrollable page, you will have to use an entire bank of registrations for a single song. In doing this, it allows you a great amount of versatility with each song selected, thus allowing you to select a host of parameter changes on the fly at the push of a single button.

Using the Music Finder Directory limits you to some degree, but not as much as some folks would like you to believe. With my setup, I indicate the key that I sing the song in within the song title on the MFD in parenthesis. The beauty of the MFD, of course, is that all the song titles are on a single page and selection is instantaneous with the push of a single button. This provides you with a seamless performance with less than a second of dead time between songs if you wish. The downsides, if any, is that you cannot store the transpose. Therefore, for those that only play in the key of "C" but sing in another key, you will have to use the transpose button, which is quick and easy. Additionally, you will have to use the OTS settings, which I frequently find are very, very good selections for the associated variations. Now, if you do not want to use those OTS settings, you can merely turn on the OTS link and select any voice you wish. I have a half dozen or more of them in my custom voice page, which I can quickly select from.

Now, I don't read music, therefore, for the songs that I need to know the chord changes, I have the guitar tabs over the words of the songs in my lyrics pages. Usually, once I have performed a song a few times, I no longer have to look at the lyrics again, but then there are those times when the brain farts occur and I cannot remember the first word of the song I have performed hundreds of times - that's when I have to use the PC.

Here's a link to how I use the MFD. Please excuse the mistakes as I was trying to explain what was doing and not concentrating on playing at the time.



Hope this helps, but if you need more help, email me your phone number and I will be more than happy to call you at your convenience.

Gary