CD-ROM Contents
6,500 files with 2,872 styles, 146 midi songs, 106 mp3 files, 296 pictures, 1,981 voices, and more ... $20
This CD-ROM includes all of the attachments uploaded to the PSR
Tutorial Forum by members in 2009. Many of the files uploaded were
ZIP files. These files have been unzipped and are included in their unzipped format.
If the zip file included only one compressed file, that file is included
in its unzipped format. If the zip file included multiple compressed
files, 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 of file into 13 top-level folders. The folder name indicates the type of files in that folder:
- EXCEL - Microsoft Excel files (.xls),
- MFD - Music finder databases (.mfd),
- MIDI - midi song files (.mid),
- MISC - miscellaneous files not found elsewhere,
- MP3 - mostly .mp3 files, but also contains some .wav files,
- PAD - multipad files (.pad),
- PDF - portable document format (.pdf) files,
- PIC - picture files, which may be .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, or .png files,
- RGT - registration files (.rgt),
- STYLE - style files (.sty, .sst, .prs, .bcs)
- TEXT - text files (.txt),
- VOICE - voice files (.vcs, .vce, .swv, .liv, .clv, .org)
- WORD - Microsoft Word files (.doc)
Forum Attachments Index
Summary Page
You will find a listing of the attachment uploads in the Microsoft Excel ForumIndex09.xls file (or the web version of this file, ForumIndex09.htm). If you have Microsoft Excel, you can open the ForumIndex09.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 13 categories.
Note that in this summary table, a "record" represents a file upload, which may have been a single file or a zipped file containing many individual files. If the original file was zipped, it is unzipped on this CD-ROM and the contents are stored in a folder with the same name as the original zip file. So, some of the "records" above actually point to a folder that may contain hundreds of files. All told, this CD-ROM contains over 6,500 files totaling 615 MB of information. There were 2,289 style files uploaded last year plus the additional 583 in the "Bonus" folder means there are 2,872 style files on this CD. MIDI file uploads were less common this past year, but you will still find 156 (.mid) song files. Because of the difficulty in uploading large files, there were only a few (16) mp3 files directly uploaded. However, there were several hundred mp3 files referenced in forum postings. A sampling of 59 of those songs are available in the MP3Int folder (and Jukebox). These, combined with the 31 Christmas mp3 files and those directly uploaded, give you over 100 MP3 files on the CD.
At the bottom of the "Summary" page, you will see two tabs: "Summary" and "Table". The "Table" tab takes you to the detailed attachment index table described below.
Attachments Index Table
A screen shot of the Table page in Excel is shown below. (This is a screen shot taken on the iMac; the Windows version of Excel may look slightly different.) The listing includes the original attachment File_Name, the main folder where the file can be found, whether the original attachment was zipped (Y/N), it's size (KB-Z for size zipped and KB for size unzipped), the ForumID of the uploader, the Date the attachment was uploaded, and the thread in which the attachment appeared (Link). The subject of that thread is a web link that, if you are connected to the internet, will take you right to the thread in which the posting for this file appears. Attachments may have been included in several messages in that topic thread, so you may have to scroll through the messages to find the exact posting with the attachment.
The File Name entries are also links. What happens when you click on one of these links depends on your computer configuration and what programs you have associated with various file types. 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 will be 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 file type included.)
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 Windows 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. Note: if you do not have Excel, you can download the free Excel Viewer 2003 from Microsoft.
Picture files
If it is a picture file, the picture will be opened and you can view it.
The ForumIndex09 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 forum ID.
NOTE: 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. In the links, a space is represented by "%20" and that made it much harder to read filenames; so the underscore was used instead of the space. In addition, there were a few attachments that were duplicates of earlier attachments. Both attachments may be referenced in the ForumIndex08 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.
Style and Midi Indexes
The ForumIndex09 file shows 698 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 see many folders within the STYLE folder. Each of these represent a zip file that was unzipped and the contents put into a folder with the zip file name. If all the contents were style files, that folder will be found as a subfolder under STYLE.
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. You will find the results in the StyleIndex.xls or StyleIndex.htm file. You can sort the styles there by name (or tempo or time signature or folder). There were actually, 2,289 styles uploaded in 2009. (Note: the StyleIndex files do not include the styles in the Bonus folder.)
I also ran the MIDI database program on the contents of the CD-ROM. It shows 156 midi files on this disc. You'll find them all listed in the MidiIndex.xls file or the MidiIndex.htm file.
Note that you do not need to use any of these index files to access the files on the CD. You can simply browse the CD and COPY any files you want directly to your hard drive or to a USB drive. The style and midi files on a USB drive can be taken to your Tyros or PSR and played loaded directly from the USB drive.
MP3 Files
Throughout 2009, folks uploaded larger files, such as MP3s, on one of the available "free" file upload sites and simply posted a link in the forum to their song or video. There were hundreds of MP3s made available this way, enough to fill up several CD-ROMs. I could not include all the external files that were referenced like this, but I have included a sampling of the external MP3s that were produced by members in 2009. The 16 files in the MP3 folder were directly uploaded to the PSR Tutorial Forum. A separate folder, called "MP3Int_files" (for MP3 Internet), holds an additional 59 MP3 files from 34 members that were stored in external file storage sites. These records are not included in the ForumIndex09 file since the file was not really an "attachment" to a posting. But I have created a Jukebox that you can use to play all of these MP3 files. The Jukebox will show the song title and the forumID of the player. Launch this jukebox by opening the MP3Int.htm file.
I have also included the MP3 files that were included in the Christmas 2009 Jukebox. These 31 songs are found in the "xmas09_files" folder. To run the Christmas jukebox, double-click on the xmas09.html file. Adding these to the external MP3 files and the uploaded MP3 files, yields over 100 MP3 files on this CD.
This page updated on January 19, 2012 .
