Michael, thanks very much for all the detail, I'll keep it and put it to use. And I too used to set up accompanyments on my daughter's keyboard and use them to create a "band minus one" to play along with. I've never tried it with folk material but I used to do it with jazz or pop tunes and my 'tele. I once worked an arrangement of "Sleepwalk" using a finger slide in standard tuning. Don't think I could remember that anymore.

I wonder if it would be useful to have "MIDI-compliant" Mudcatters submit their background MIDI files as Mudcat Resources for others to download and use as a practice aid? If several people are doing that, maybe we could build a useful library. The MIDI files you can find elsewhere on the Net are usually unsatisfactory for the purpose.

      - Mark