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