Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

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 ( default is 1 ) as you change it, the voice being played back through that midi channel also 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", after you've finished recording, you can change to another kit ( one which uses midi channel 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!!