Hey all you PSR 9000 users around the world. I'm having a hell of a hard time getting the drive to work. Here's my problem.
I installed a Toshiba 1.3 gig that I bought from Yamaha for the PSR 8000's. I formated the drive just fine. I created a directory called XG Songs. I then took an XG standard midi file disk with 8 songs on it and when to the copy file prompt. I then saw all the songs and I chose the all copy and hit next and went to the destination disk of Hard Drive XG song directory and copied all the songs to the hard drive. Now,,,,, in the old PSR 8000 to find a song on the drive all I had to do was hit song select, choose the hard drive directory I wanted, and scroll down and choose the song I wanted to play and push start. However,,,,,,, on the 9000 everytime I push one of the song buttons marked with a I -V, all I get is that the disk is not in the drive. I can't figure out how to select the hard drive as the source of playing a midi file. The manual really sucks in this area. There is almost no information on doing anything other than the simplist tasks. All of you guys that think the X1 manual is bad, just wait till you see this one! I haven't been this frustrated since the first time I looked at the roland G800 manual. Please help if you can. Especially you european users who have had this product for a couple of months now. I appreciate any help offered.
Thanks,
George Kaye
PS. What I thought of this keyboard when I tried it in October at Yamaha is still my humble opinion. The sounds are good, the styles are just OK and the operating system leaves much to be desired. But, it is a Yamaha, and it looks great and the speakers are wonderful. However, I still don't like not being able to call up any sound I want in a song or style quickly without having to enter into a recording mode. If there is another way of doing it, I've spent all day today looking for it and can't find it. I did an A-B test of styles and sounds between the X1 and PSR 9000, and I still think the styles in the X1 are much more exciting and the hard disk's ability to find things quickly and change things quickly are a plus in my opinion. Maybe after a few sessions with the 9000 I will change my opinion. I like it alot, but I would have liked to have seen some major enhancments that just are not there yet.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene

I think I found the answer to my question after reading through the owners manual again tonight. If after entering the song button I choose the "pop up" page, I will enter the page that lets me select a drive and than a directory. Since my 9000's are at the store and not at home, I will have to wait until I go to the store to try this out, but I think I found it! I think I read this page 20 times before realizing what Yamaha was trying to tell me.
Also, if I am reading this correctly, If I go into Part settings, while in the mixing console mode, if I move over using the arrow control to the word "voice", it seems I can go into each part and change the sound I want without going into the record mode. The manual states that I can make the changes then call up the custom voice display and store these settings. All the paramaters can be stored together with the custom voice. If I then save all this as a registration, than I can probably have my changes without actually having to go into the record mode like I had to on the PSR 8000.
I really hope this will work. It's 2:30 AM Sunday morning. I'm up because my 21 year old sun who goes to UC Riverside, just called and woke me up because he an a shool friend had a few too many beers and were needing someone to help one of them win a bet! Now I can't go back to sleep, so I was reading the owners manual again, and the words finally jumped out at me.
Goodnight (or good morning, depending on what part of the world you live in)
George Kaye

Hallo,

You've got it right ....you have to push the buttom popup in order to see the harddisk or zipdrive.
I installed a harddisk Hitaschi (6,1 gigabyte) and I had now problems until now.
I have my psr 9000 since november 1999. (I live in Belgium). I think the psr 9000 is very good....we have to be patient for the new operating system 2,0.
I also have a psr 740 and this is also very good....same voices as the 9000.

Greetings from Alain,
Alain.Herregat@skynet.be

You can access the songs on your harddisk and temporarily change the voicing the way you describe. I don't think you can change the voicing of a song permanently until OS 2.0 with full song edit comes along. At least, I haven't found a way to do it.
Custom voice is for storing your own edited voices and has nothing to do with songs.


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PO

Yes, I just came back from my store and I was able to assign hundred of songs to the 5 song buttons and then go and save my set up so that after I turn off the keyboard when I return all my songs are still immediately available to me. I love this feature. I haven't tried this yet but in the PSR 8000 you could call up a song and have it saved in Registration Memory locations so that every time you picked a registration button it would call up the correct song and all the voices you would want to play on your keyboard. Perhaps you can do this in the PSR9000. I played with the real time mixer and changed the voices temp. but I didn't try to save anything yet. I really like the data management system on this keyboard except that I can't play a song and locate the next song I want to play without first stopping the song currently playing. That's not a big deal for most. The vocalharmonizer is much better sounding than the PSR 8000. I think they are using a better mic preamp or something. My opinion of this keyboard has gone way up since my 5 hours on it at my store today. However, I still like most of the sounds better on the X1 and most of the styles on the X1 are still more exciting to me. But, they are both great keyboards.
George kaye
Kaye's Music Scene

One of the features announced in OS 2.0 is 'Show list and choose song while playing'. I think that will take care of your wish, but I'm not sure.

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PO