Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Hi,

Looking for any input from users regarding how some of those 
functions in voice edit mode are being used out there.  Things like: 
Key, Rim to Pad, Pan, Tune, Decay, Cutoff Frequency etc.  These are 
ones that don't get mentioned often. Do most of you just leave well 
enough alone, and stay with the preset values?  My experience with 
some of these settings that are way down the menu tree is that the 
more you mess with what they give you, the more complicated the kit 
becomes to maintain or recreate in a different kit.  Things like 
voices, layers, xfade etc are very useful.  But one could go crazy 
pushing buttons and messing with options like those mentioned above 
forever, only to ask yourself "why".... and "what did I just do"?

Any discussion about how those are getting utilized would be 
interesting to me... hopefully to others as well.

Thanks for any input!

Rolf

I don't use Rim to Pad because it's for stereo drum
pads and I only have the mono ones on my dtxpress.
As for the others I think Decay & Cutoff frequency are
the most useful.  Decay is useful on the hihat sounds
- reducing the decay I think makes them sound more
natural.  As for cutoff frequency I use this when
crossfading 2 drum samples.  If one sample sounds too
bright I set the cutoff frequency down - or if it is
too dull I set it up to add a bit more life to it.
Yes the menus can be a bit of a pain to navigate but
once you've saved your kit in one of the user banks
then you don't have to go through all the hassle
twice.
Also I think it's useful that you don't have to start
from scratch, you can use a preset kit as a starting
point - edit it and then save it as your own so that
way you might only have to edit a couple of the drums
instead of the whole kit.

Rick


--- rbaehr@... wrote: > Hi,
> 
> Looking for any input from users regarding how some
> of those 
> functions in voice edit mode are being used out
> there.  Things like: 
> Key, Rim to Pad, Pan, Tune, Decay, Cutoff Frequency
> etc.  These are 
> ones that don't get mentioned often. Do most of you
> just leave well 
> enough alone, and stay with the preset values?  My
> experience with 
> some of these settings that are way down the menu
> tree is that the 
> more you mess with what they give you, the more
> complicated the kit 
> becomes to maintain or recreate in a different kit. 
> Things like 
> voices, layers, xfade etc are very useful.  But one
> could go crazy 
> pushing buttons and messing with options like those
> mentioned above 
> forever, only to ask yourself "why".... and "what
> did I just do"?
> 
> Any discussion about how those are getting utilized
> would be 
> interesting to me... hopefully to others as well.
> 
> Thanks for any input!
> 
> Rolf
> 
> 


=====
Rick        __     __
 Kelsall    /  \~~~/  \
      ,----(     ..    )
     /      \__     __/
    /|         (\  |(
   ^ \   /___\  /\ |
      |__|   |__|-"  Rarr!

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Rick,

Thanks for the input - when I first got my set, I didn't get too deep 
into some of those functions.  I did do 2 voices per pad, but never 
got into xfade so was always disappointed in the results.  Just now 
getting into that quite a bit.  The xfade really does make a 
difference, and is great for bringing in that second sound slowly 
when you want to do that.  I think I also tried TOO hard in trying to 
exactly recreate the sounds of an artists drum set when doing one of 
their songs... we do 60's rock stuff, so for each song we would do, I 
would listen to the record quite closely, trying to get each drum and 
cymbal to sound like theirs.  So I would wind up with a different 
drum set for each song we played.  It took alot of time, and seemed 
like I was always in there messing around with settings, based on 
what I had the set plugged into... amp, pa, or whatever. I also found 
myself scrambling to find the set I named "Pretty Woman" when it was 
time to play "Pretty Woman".  I think I finally made one too many 
changes, and I could never get any of the sets to sound right after 
that... so I did a factory reset and started over.  I thought this 
time I would make 2 or 3 sets, get each drum and cymbal to sound like 
I would want my set to sound like, and leave it alone and concentrate 
more on playing than playing around with settings!  But as you get 
deeper into the settings, the options seem to be endless.

So that's what brought up the question for me... looking for others 
experiences in what types of settings they actually find useful in 
changing, and what makes more sense in just leaving at the factory 
presets.  Like reverb per each pad, or just changing the set's reverb 
level, decay, filter cutoff etc.  Hearing what other's have done 
always gets you to look at things in different ways.

Thanks again for inputs!

--- In DTXpress@y..., Rick Kelsall <rick_kelsall@y...> wrote:

> I don't use Rim to Pad because it's for stereo drum
> pads and I only have the mono ones on my dtxpress.
> As for the others I think Decay & Cutoff frequency are
> the most useful.  Decay is useful on the hihat sounds
> - reducing the decay I think makes them sound more
> natural.  As for cutoff frequency I use this when
> crossfading 2 drum samples.  If one sample sounds too
> bright I set the cutoff frequency down - or if it is
> too dull I set it up to add a bit more life to it.
> Yes the menus can be a bit of a pain to navigate but
> once you've saved your kit in one of the user banks
> then you don't have to go through all the hassle
> twice.
> Also I think it's useful that you don't have to start
> from scratch, you can use a preset kit as a starting
> point - edit it and then save it as your own so that
> way you might only have to edit a couple of the drums
> instead of the whole kit.
> 
> Rick
> 
> 
> --- rbaehr@h... wrote: > Hi,
> > 
> > Looking for any input from users regarding how some
> > of those 
> > functions in voice edit mode are being used out
> > there.  Things like: 
> > Key, Rim to Pad, Pan, Tune, Decay, Cutoff Frequency
> > etc.  These are 
> > ones that don't get mentioned often. Do most of you
> > just leave well 
> > enough alone, and stay with the preset values?  My
> > experience with 
> > some of these settings that are way down the menu
> > tree is that the 
> > more you mess with what they give you, the more
> > complicated the kit 
> > becomes to maintain or recreate in a different kit. 
> > Things like 
> > voices, layers, xfade etc are very useful.  But one
> > could go crazy 
> > pushing buttons and messing with options like those
> > mentioned above 
> > forever, only to ask yourself "why".... and "what
> > did I just do"?
> > 
> > Any discussion about how those are getting utilized
> > would be 
> > interesting to me... hopefully to others as well.
> > 
> > Thanks for any input!
> > 
> > Rolf
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> =====
> Rick        __     __
>  Kelsall    /  \~~~/  \
>       ,----(     ..    )
>      /      \__     __/
>     /|         (\  |(
>    ^ \   /___\  /\ |
>       |__|   |__|-"  Rarr!
> 
> ____________________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get your free @... address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk
> or your free @... address at http://mail.yahoo.ie

It's a shame you had to resort to the factory settings
- but sometimes that's the only option. You may want
to look at saving and loading your kits to a PC in the
future. This is a great way of keeping a huge
selection of kits that can be used anytime without
having them all on the DTXpress. Also perfect for
backups!  All the information you need is on the
website www.gihe.fsnet.co.uk/dtxpressions on the Setup page.

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