Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Giles,
Great to see your web site up and running, some real good tips and tricks too.

Here's a couple of variations on some oyu've already published.

1) Increase/Decrease kit pads - If like me you need a different sound in the chorus of a song to the verse, and hence need to totally different kits, then set one pad up as an "increase kit" pad in one kit and in the other set the same pad as a "decrease kit" pad.  That way you can't get to a wrong kit just by hitting pads!

e.g. : kit 60 - pad 10 - increase kit
         kit 61 - pad 10 - decrease kit

Now when you sart playing in kit 60 you can hit pad 10 to jump to kit 61, and then you only have to hit the same pad again to drop back to kit 60.  It's impossible to end up on a kit where pad 10 is assigned to anything else.  Before I set up like this I had pad 9 as "increase kit" and pad 10 as "decrease kit" occasionally I'd hit the wrong pad or get a double trigger which would send me to a kit where pads 9 and 10 were set to percussion sounds, the only way back then was to take a good look at the brain display and press the appropriate buttons, no fun at a live gig.

2) Practice vs Live mode
	Don't waste time on stage pressing "shift and click" to change the kick volume.  By changing the settings in the Utility menu you can set the kit as practice or Live, the difference is in the way the click and Accompanyment volume knobs work.  In Practice mode you can alter the snare or bass volume using these knobs and the shift key, but without the shift they adjust the click and accmpanyment volumes, as you'd expect.  When you set the kit to "live" mode, this changes.  The two knobs no longer adjust accompanyment or click volumes, instead they adjust snare and bass drum volumes (without pressing shift) making life much easier, and if necessary you can press shift and turn the knob to adjust tom volumes on one and cymbal volumes on the other, giving you total control of your kits volume levels.  Very handy for when the rest of the band starts realy hammering their instruments to get that extra bit of volume.

Hope these help Giles, I'll keep an eye out for them on your site.

Keep up the good work,
	Andy

Andy, thanks for the gig info. I will definitely be
interested in coming along. No worries about the type
of music - it's exactly the same as I do in Fluid
Power Society! I'm also *very* interested in hearing
the DTXpress live - ready or not.

- I've also found there's a pseudo-trigger on the
hi-hat, a kind of half-open sound that is not catered
for on the brain. If you listen to it, it sounds like
a mix of HH-Open and HH-Closed (as if you had one on
V1 & one on V2). Maybe we can program it as such.

- Pad Song problem - I posted this exact same problem
a while ago but no-one replied. I'm afraid I gave up
pretty quickly on this one. If it only works when I
have to press 8 and a half buttons - then I won't use
it. Maybe one for a rainy Sunday...

- Incidental GM sounds - my only guess here is that
there might be Program Change Control messages (or
something else) getting to the brain. The easiest way
to sort this out is to fire up a MIDI analyser utility
on the PC and examine what's coming out. I use MIDI
Monitor - nice and simple. I'll mail you a copy
tonight if you don't have it.

- Web site. Thanks for the compliment. I didn't think
it was that good. The Netscape display bug was
actually a gap appearing where two frames joined. The
window size was purposely fixed to look good at
800x600. I was planning on working on the hi-res
version later! Thanks also for the tips :-)

- Kelvin. I reckon this Roland thing you've got is
using GS MIDI and not GM MIDI. Ther simplest way to
wire up the DTXpress is to use a soundcard (SB16 or
similar) and just plug in a MIDI lead with an IN & OUT
connector. (If you get all the settings right - and
most are OK straight out of the box) - you can't go
wrong.

- Aaron. GM specification says that drums go on
Channel 10 but you can move 'em onto other channels
(check out Andy's post). The problem with the 2-track
recording is that the brain cannot playback more than
one kit at once. This is a limitation of the brain's
software. The data stored in a song's memory is the
minimum reqd. I think it's just "the pads that you hit
during recording". If you're planning on proper
recording - use a proper sequencer. The DTXpress just
isn't up to the job...

Bye for now
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