CD-ROM Contents

14,600+ files with 6,000 styles, 1,200 midi songs, 100+ mp3 files, 1,000 multipads, 600 pictures, 600 mfd files, and more ... $20!

This CD-ROM includes all of the attachments that have been uploaded to the PSR Tutorial Forum by members from mid 2005 to the end of 2007. Many of the files uploaded were compressed ZIP files. These files have all been unzipped and are included in their unzipped format. If the zip file included only one file, it it is included in its unzipped format. If there were multiple files in the zip file, they are included in a folder with the same name as the original zip file.

CD-ROM Structure

For your convenience, attachment files have been organized by type into 12 top-level folders: Alpenvoices, EXCEL, MFD, MIDI, MISC, MP3, PAD, PIC, STYLE, TEXT, VOICE, and ZIP.

The folder name indicates the type of files in that folder:

• styles (.sty) are in the STYLE folder
• midi songs (.mid) are in the MIDI folder
• multipad files (.pad) are in the PAD folder
• music finder databases (.mfd) are in the MFD folder
• Microsoft Excel files (.xls) are in the EXCEL folder
• voices (.vce, .swv, .liv) are in the VOICE folder
• sampled voices (.tvi, .tvn) are in Alpenvoices--these can only be used on the Tyros2 or Tyros3,
• zip files that included a variety of file types are uncompressed and stored as a folder in the ZIP folder.

Some folders hold several similar file types:

• PIC holds picture files, which may be .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, or .png files,
• TEXT has text-type files including .txt, .doc, .pdf, and .rtf files,
• MP3 is mostly .mp3 files, but also contains .wav, .wmv, and .mpg files, and
• MISC has registration files (.rgt) and other miscellaneous files.

If you open a particular folder, say STYLE, you will see all the individual styles listed by name, plus folders (and sometimes sub-folders) with additional individual styles. The folders and subfolders are used for styles that were originally uploaded as zip files. For example, the file attachment Ballads01.zip contained 132 style files. These files are found in the Ballads01 subfolder within the STYLE folder.

Forum Attachments Index

A complete listing of the 2,261 attachments that were uploaded during this period is available in the ForumIndex.xls file (or the web version of this file, ForumIndex.htm). If you have Microsoft Excel, you can open the ForumIndex.xls file directly in Excel. It includes Macros and you should enable these macros when you open the file. If you don't have Excel, you can use the web version of the file. When you open either file, you see a summary page showing the number of attachment files that were uploaded under each of the 12 categories.

At the bottom of the page are two tabs: "Summary" and "Table". Click on the "Table" tab to go to the file details page.

The screen shot below shows the Excel version of the Table page. On this page you will find a detailed listing for each file that includes:

• File Name - the original attachment file name,
• Folder - the folder on the CD-ROM where you will find that attachment,
• ZIP - whether the original attachment was zipped (Y/N),
• KB - the size of the file in kilobytes,
• ForumID - the PSR Tutorial forumID of the uploader,
• Date - the date the attachment was uploaded, and
• LINK - the thread in which the attachment appeared.

The subject of the thread is a web link that, if you are connected to the internet, will take you right to that orginal thread in which the posting for the attachment appears. You may have to scroll through the messages in the topic thread to find the particular message that included this attachment.

When you click on the File Name link in ForumIndex.xls or ForumIndex.htm, the file will be opened. What happens when you "open" a file depends on your computer configuration and what programs you have associated with various filetypes. The possibilities are discussed below.

zip files

If the original file were a zip file, all the contents of that zip file are now in a folder (generally of the same name). When you click on the folder name, that folder is opened so you can see the contents. If the original zip file contained only one file, that individual file is listed by name under File Name with the filetype included. For example, if "Airport.zip" contained only one file, "Airport.mid", then the file would be unzipped and "Airport.mid" would be listed as the filename.

midi files

If the attachment is a midi file, the midi file will be launched and can be played through whatever program you have on your PC associated with ".mid" files. You can have this set up so that it opens a file like Van Bosco's Midi Player and plays the song through your keyboard.

MP3 files

If it is an MP3, your MP3 player will start playing the song. All PCs include Windows Media Player, which can play mp3 files. Apple's iTunes is another program you can download (for free from www.apple.com/itunes) and use to store and play mp3 files. Note that you can also use iTunes to convert .wav files to .mp3 files.

Excel files

If it is an Excel file and you have Microsoft Excel, Excel will be launched and the file loaded.

Picture files

If it is a picture file, the picture will be opened and you can view it.

The ForumIndex Excel (or html) file shows records sorted by folder and then by filename. If you have Excel, you can alternatively sort the records by filename or by date or by forumID.

CD-ROM File Index

The ForumIndex file lists 2,261 records, but there are many more files than that on the CD-ROM since a "zip" file counts as only one of those records, but can contain many individual files. You will notice many subfolders within the STYLE folder. Each of these subfolders represent a zip file that was unzipped and the contents put into a folder with the same name as the original zip file attachment. If all the compressed files in the zip file were style files, that folder is stored as a subfolder within the main STYLE folder. When a zip file contained a mix of filetypes, or an executable file, it is stored in the main folder labeled ZIP. For example, the folder called "Neil_Diamond_ Styles_midis" includes both style files and midi files, so that subfolder is found in the ZIP folder.

For your convenience, I ran the PSR Style Database against the contents of this CD-ROM to locate all of the styles on the CD-ROM. You will find the results in the Styles567.xls - shown in the screen shot below - (or Styles567.txt ) file. Using Excel, you can sort the styles by name (or tempo or time signature or folder). You will see that there are 6,852 styles on this CD-ROM. There are some duplicates, of course, but over 6,000 of these style files are unique.

I also ran the PSR MIDI Database program on the contents of the CD-ROM. It shows 1,200 midi files on this disc. You'll find them all listed in the MidiSongs.xls file.

All together there are 14,644 files on this CD-ROM, an incredible collection of resources provided by members of the PSR Tutorial forum. Over time, we have allowed a wider range of filetypes to be uploaded and have allowed larger file sizes. So, while I was able to put two and a half years of attachments on this one CD-ROM, the attachments uploaded in 2008 fill up the Forum 2008 CD-ROM all by themselves.

Attachment Adjustments

Filenames

Generally, the filenames match the name of the attachment file. However, to provide some consistency and to make it easier to include links to files, spaces in filenames have generally been replaced with the underscore character. A file uploaded as (Love Story.zip) was converted to "Love_Story.zip" for this CD-ROM. In the links, a space is represented by "%20" and that made it much more difficult to read filenames; so the underscore was used instead of the space.

Duplicate Files

Some attachments were duplicates of earlier attachments. Both attachments may be referenced in the ForumIndex file since they were uploaded by different people on different dates and part of different topic threads. Where this was obvious, however, only one copy of the attached file is stored on the CD-ROM and the link for the filename goes to this one copy.

Rescaling Pictures

One last point, when this was all put together, the size of all the files was larger than would fit on a single CD-ROM. To conserve space, I rescaled some of the larger picture files so they would not be any more than 800 pixels in width (or height). This still makes for a very large picture on a computer screen, but reduced the size of the stored files dramatically thus freeing up additional space on the CD-ROM to make sure everything would fit. There was even room to include the Alpenvoices, which are very large files, but only of value to Tyros1/2/3 owners.

This page updated on January 18, 2012 .