Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Been playing with pad songs alot, so I've worked out a couple of great things about the DTXpress that they don't tell you in the books.

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 pad song 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 swapping the 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 to your 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 rimshot!.  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 me a 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 and tricks 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.  

Catch ya later guys
	Andy