These are all great suggestions and I really appreciate them, but neither of them would work well for me for the following reasons:

I can't use multiple panel memories - each with a slower tempo because a performance sometimes involves a LOT of music - as many as 15 different pieces of music in rapid succession - I could probably do it, but keeping track of which bank to use for which song just sounds like a lot of work.

Pre-recording a control track with tempo only is another good suggestion, but since this is praise music, I usually determine the number of repeats in accordance with how the particular piece is being received by the congregration (as the Spirit leads - so to speak) - if they seem to be really enjoying it I add an extra couple times through - if not, I may end it sooner and not even go through the whole thing.

I guess that the best solution for me would get back to my original suggestion of having tap tempo available on a foot pedal. I usually find myself tapping my foot to the beat anyway, so it seems like a natural solution. It also seems that just about every one of us probably has the same problem.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect that this is completely a software solution - if Technics wanted to, they could probably come out with version 11 of the keyboard's operating system with tap tempo available on the list of functions you can select for the foot pedal.

Now, I'm new to this forum and I've been a little surprised at some of what I've read here in terms of how poorly Technics listens to its customer base (I've not had any dealings with the company directly yet). This suggests that a request to them to upgrade the software in the 5000 would probably fall on deaf ears - besides if they did that, they would eliminate the only reason I personally would have to upgrade to the 6000. After reading some of the comments people have made about the 6000 it seems as though its not fully cooked yet and I'll probably want to wait a year or so before upgrading. In the meantime, I LOVE my 5000 (all except for the missing ritard foot pedal function).

Regards - and have a great holiday everyone.

------------------
Andy