Just my 2 cents, and many of my ideas came from posts from Gary and/or Scott.

I have a number of ways of organizing styles for songs with folders. I started initially by creating my own set of 18 registrations that I use for various types of gigs. Each registration has a variety of music, I also used some of Gary's registrations 40s, 50s, 60s to further get organzied and because he's done a great job with the registrations. Next I created a master library of styles with series of folders labeled A-E, F-J and so on thru the alphabet.

When I find a style I like for a song I rename that style to coincide with the name of the song then place it in the proper folder. After months of work my library is pretty well established I can draw from the library. I also spend as Gary has suggested rehearsal time at home.

During this last fall season I was hired to play music at a fashion show with a Fall Harvest theme. The clients wanted some Andrew's Sisters music to be played during the show. Simple enough I created another folder (Fall Harvest Fashion Show) using my usb thumb drive at my computer then simply copied and pasted the selections I wanted into the Fashion Show folder. In the case of the fashion show there was a specific order of fashions that would be modeled. So that I could match the order of the songs to the models I then put numbers in front of the named styles so that I could have them in a specfic order. In other words, Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree would appear after Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, but if I wanted Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree to appear before Bugle Boy in my folder I would rename the file in the Fall Harvest Fashion folder 01Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree and Bugle Boy as 02Bugle Boy. The numbering convention before song title helps me be as organized as possible especially when I'm playing a theme type gig. Of course, it is some extra work doing it, but it works for my use. I do supplement a bit with the MFD probably not as much as Gary or Scott does. I have also downloaded Gary's customized MFD files. Any changes to the MFD for the most part I do at my computer.

One other thing is that I also depend on lead sheets since I play very little from memory. That's where having a Muisc Pad Pro comes in real handy. Much of my music has now been downloaded into my MPP. Great thing about the MPP is that I can create play lists that correspond to my folders and/or registration setups in the 3000.



[This message has been edited by Stephenm52 (edited 02-10-2006).]