Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Don't know that I can help at this point other than to pass along 
some info from my research.  I am trying to do similar to what you 
want to do except I'm using Cakewalk Pro Audio 6.0 as the sequencer.  
If you are playing MIDI back through your DTX and getting a drum kit 
then consider yourself lucky: seems like I and just about everyone 
else just starts out getting piano sounds!  In fact, I'm still stuck 
at that point.  I'm pursuing looking into sending inserting Program 
Changes from Cakewalk and learning about Instrument Definitions.  If 
anybody has a .ini file for Yamaha DTXpress instrument definitions 
for Cakewalk, I'd sure like to know about it... 


NOTE: The following quotes were gleaned from the archives on this 
site.  I'm sorry but I did not keep up with the author's name for 
each quote.  I think most of the quotes are from Giles and Andy.
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So, I've solved my own problem, partly, but I still feel the DTXpress 
has a bug in it somewhere.Figured out how to do a couple of tricks 
using "program change" numbers and"midi channels"First you have to 
set the PC10 and 10 options in the utilities midi menu to"on".Now if 
you take a song, say song 15, and start playback, all you get is 
piano and drums.If you scroll through the voice menu ( the song menu 
is locked out ) you get to two of the "common" pages which let you 
change the midi channel information. On the first of these pages, 
turn on midi channels 7, 8, 9 and 10. on page two there are two 
options, one controls volume, the other pan, play with these later. 
Now if you go back to the first page, you can change the "PC" value ( 
defaultis 1 ) as you change it, the voice being played back through 
that midi channelalso changes! So instead of everything being piano 
"PC - 1" you can now set channels 7, 8 & 9 to be three different 
instruments. Makes the preset songs sound much better.Further, if you 
want to play any of these sounds, you can. Just change the channel 
"ch" value of the voice of the snare "pad 2" for example, to "ch - 
11". Now sceoll down and turn on channel 11, when you play the snare 
"pad 2" you get a piano sound. You can change this note by changing 
the voice note, and if you change the "PC" value you change the GM 
voice being played. Another Song related use: When you record a song, 
make sure all the pads are set to a midi channel other than 10, now 
when you turn on that channel in the "song" menu AND "voice" menu, 
and set the "song" menu channel value to "drumV" instead of "meldy", 
afteryou've finished recording, you can change to another kit ( one 
which uses midichannel 10 ) or even edit the existing kit back to 
"channel 10" and change all its voices, without affecting what you've 
already recorded!! Now you can record two tracks using different drum 
kits! - I think someone wanted to do this with a latin kit on track 1 
and a standard kit on track 2, well now you can! By the way, watch 
out for the program change kit assignment in the utilities menu (see 
referrence guide) I reset all mine to "none". If you don't, when the 
brain gets a signal from program change 1 it swaps to drum kit 40! I 
was realy confused by this when it first happened. There you go, 
Happy new year folks, hope I'm being helpfull!!

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The Midi problem is that when I connect up to the band sequencer, and 
playback a session we just recorded, the drum pattern plays back 
through the DTXpress as piano notes, instead of drum notes, despite 
my best efforts to counteract it. The problem is quickly solved, 
various set-up options need to be changed, I forget which, but the 
brain still reverts to piano if you stop and start the sequencer 
again without any change to the parameters!! It can be cured by 
moving a parameter away from the desired one and back again, like 
channel instrument number or changing between Meldy and Drum (you 
know what I mean)

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You probably already know this, but don't forget to>use single-voice 
sounds for all the pads, otherwise>you'll have more MIDI events 
sitting in your file than>you should have.>I did this once and found 
a cowbell playing every time>I hit a tom!>>You're right about the 
MIDI note numbers not being >standard on the kick/snare. No idea why 
Yamaha did>that. To get around it, I set up a separate user 
kit>called "MIDI standard" with all the voices set to the>correct 
note numbers. Then I just record using that kit.>

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I gotta say the fact that midi channels revert to Piano at the drop > 
of a hat drives me crazy. It's made worse of course by the fact > 
that both the song and the kit (voice menu) have midi channel > 
control options, and so they constantly override each other!!> This 
is the weird thing about the DTXpress, there are at least a > couple 
of instances I can think of where duplicate functions are in > 
different menus.> 1) Midi channel control, but the voice menu and the 
song > menu contain different midi channel options!!> 2) Utilities 
menu and Voice menu. There are options in the > utilities menu to 
alter the voices of a specific kit! Why??> 

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When I record from my DTXpress into cubase everything is fine. When 
playingback though I get the dreaded piano tones from the 
DTXpress.OK, we've been here and I thought I had it sussed. You 
change the channelsettings from "meldy" to "drumV" and now the sounds 
are fine...until I leave that menu page!!As soon as I return the 
module to the default page (showing kit and song numbers) the damn 
unit goes right back to playing piano!!When the unit is first turned 
on (no matter what the song and voice "common"sttings) the unit will 
play out piano until the channel sttings page is selected and "drumV" 
is highlighted and the "+" key pressed. The unit justseems to ignore 
the actual settings until you go in and fiddle with it, and get the 
unit to notice the change. 
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UT SEQ SETUP
MIDI Control= On

UT MIDI RECEIVE (the important one..)
PC= On SysEx= On

UT MIDI RECEIVE (UT MERGE SETUP ? I have no UT MIDI RECIEVE with a 
merge output option)
Merge Output= Off

UT MIDI SETUP
Send HH Ctrl= On

UT MIDI SETUP
DevNo=ALL Locl= On


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First - I and I think Giles ( Hi Giles! ) have had problems with the 
pad songs playing back as GM piano voices. Got that sorted now ( I 
hope ). You have to go into the song menu and turn on channel 6, 
that's where the padsong is played through. You'll see that by 
default it channel 6 is set to"meldy", when you change this to 
"drumv" back come the drum voices. Fantastic. Of course you can also 
then change the pan and volume of channel 6 which affects the whole 
pad song. Second - When you record a song it doesn't record the pad 
that was struck (like it says in the manual ), instead it records the 
"note#". If you look in the voice menu of a pad you'll see that it 
has a "note#" parameter, this is how the DTXpress recognises the 
different pads. By recording a song, then swappingthe note#'s of the 
pads and rims you fool the DTXpress into playing the song through the 
rim triggers, leaving you free to change your pad voices without 
affecting the song! It's simple. Record a simple snare pattern into 
song track1. Now go back toyour voice menu in a user kit, Check the 
note number of the pad2 (snare) then step up to rim2 and check its 
note#, (remember it!). Change the rim note# to the same as the pad 
note#, now you'll get lots of "already in use" messages. Go back to 
pad2 (snare) and change its note# to the old rim2 note# (told you to 
remember it!). Now when you play back the song the snare has been 
replaced with a rim shot!. You can now go back into the voice menu 
for rim2 and edit the voice to whatever you want. Nice and easy, 
leaving you full volume controle over all the voices in the song 
seperate to your pads, and letting you effectively play two different 
kits simultaneously. I just love this DTXpress unit, if only someone 
could have written a better manual. ( Hey Giles!! - looks like your 
next web page!! ) By the way, that last point on pad note#'s is realy 
important if your copying pads to other pads. When you copy a pad you 
also copy its note#, this gave mea real headache until I figured it 
out. If you don't edit the note# after copying pads, then the two 
pads kind of get confused between which voice they're meant to be 
playing (if you change one voice of course ). Anyway, there you go 
folks. Feel free to add any of this to your tips andtricks board 
Giles, or to tell me it's all in the manual and I'm just being dumb!! 
:)I think I'm finally starting to get the use out of this little box 
that I realy wanted. 

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