Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Good points Giles, but "hall1" weird...  I thought it may change the voice reverb setting, but no it does nothing at all does it.

Just looks like another bug.

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??

Back to Pad songs - Why do pad songs only play track 1 of a song you've recorded yourself?  I recorded a cool two track backing beat and set it to a pad song, low and behold, out comes only track 1.  Out of interest, the kit on track 1 was on channel 11 and the kit on track 2 on channel 9, when you playback the song, there are your tracks.  Use a pad song and you find that what was on channel 11 is now on channel 7 and what was on channel 9 has dissapeared!  Maybe it's because I'm using diferent channels, I haven't gone back and re-tested it yet, it may be that the pad song can only playback one channel, a channel 4 lower than the orriginal recording.  Has that got anything to do with what you've been seeing in the loops I wonder Giles?  Maybe the loops are set-up with a number of midi channels, but they then didn't use all of them, but never deleted the obsolete ones.  
	Is there a way to link pad songs, or drum loops to the time signature and tempo of the main song?  It would be good to be able to hit a pad song loop and know it was going to come in first beat of the next bar and be in time with everything else.

Here's an interesting one I don't remember reading in the manual -
	Ever thought that sitting holding the "+" button to go from 1 to 127 takes a while?  Well if whilst holding the "+" button you also press "-", then you begin to move in increments of 10 rather than increments of 1.  You have to let go of the "+" button to stop, then press "+" again to start moving in increments of 1 again.
Only problem with this is that, since you are holding down the "+" key, you go into "fast scroll" so its hard to just move 10 or 20 increments exactly.  Still its faster than waiting for the machine to count from 1 to 127, and its a real fast way to get back to the space at the start of the alphabet when naming kits and songs and stuff.

This message list is so much better than those two manuals.  I'm sooooo glad its here, thanks to Chris for that one I think.
Anyway, I'll get arround to posting some of my kits up here at some point, but with a first gig two weeks away, and only half the set prepared, things are a little panicy right now, so until next time....

Keep fiddling with those knobs guys!!

Hi all,

How has everyone been?  I've been really busy with the holidays and
haven't had time to play outside the acoustic realm much, but I've read
back through a weeks worth of e-mails now.  I've got to give it up to
Andy--your tips are exactly what I've been trying to figure out since I
bought the DTXpress.  It seems Yamaha should put you on the pay roll.
Yamaha told me personally that it's IMPOSSIBLE to get the DTXpress to
voice 2 different kits at the same time!  I knew that was wrong because
certain kits WILL play over others without manipulating any settings
(i.e. Latin perc. over GM jazz) while some won't.  What it sounds like,
though, is that to get the job done you are utilizing a function that the
DTXpress wasn't designed for?  That is, you are fooling it into thinking
you are using dual zone pads?  I'm probably way off because I haven't
tried it yet, but if this is right the DTXpress may have just gone up in
market value!  We should watch out!  Anyway, if this is correct, then
theoretically the DTXpress could voice tons of sounds simultaneously if
we utilize the cross fade, pan, rim to pad, multiple tracks, etc...  It's
just a matter of time.  Andy, you the man!  This discussion group is
fantastic.  My owners manual keeps growing as I add printed out e-mails
to the back of it.

Take care,
Aaron.

P.S.  Poor college student seeks info--is anyone using 'MIDI
Orchestrator' for their external sequencer software?  If so, have you
been able to make the DTXpress the master metronome as opposed to
vice-versa?  How?  I'm not sure the software supports this feature.

On Sun, 2 Jan 2000 08:44:20 -0000 Sanctum@... (Hubble, Andrew
John) writes:

> 
> Good points Giles, but "hall1" weird...  I thought it may change the 
> voice reverb setting, but no it does nothing at all does it.
> 
> Just looks like another bug.
> 
> 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??
> 
> Back to Pad songs - Why do pad songs only play track 1 of a song 
> you've recorded yourself?  I recorded a cool two track backing beat 
> and set it to a pad song, low and behold, out comes only track 1.  
> Out of interest, the kit on track 1 was on channel 11 and the kit on 
> track 2 on channel 9, when you playback the song, there are your 
> tracks.  Use a pad song and you find that what was on channel 11 is 
> now on channel 7 and what was on channel 9 has dissapeared!  Maybe 
> it's because I'm using diferent channels, I haven't gone back and 
> re-tested it yet, it may be that the pad song can only playback one 
> channel, a channel 4 lower than the orriginal recording.  Has that 
> got anything to do with what you've been seeing in the loops I 
> wonder Giles?  Maybe the loops are set-up with a number of midi 
> channels, but they then didn't use all of them, but never deleted 
> the obsolete ones.  
> 	Is there a way to link pad songs, or drum loops to the time 
> signature and tempo of the main song?  It would be good to be able 
> to hit a pad song loop and know it was going to come in first beat 
> of the next bar and be in time with everything else.
> 
> Here's an interesting one I don't remember reading in the manual -
> 	Ever thought that sitting holding the "+" button to go from 
> 1 to 127 takes a while?  Well if whilst holding the "+" button you 
> also press "-", then you begin to move in increments of 10 rather 
> than increments of 1.  You have to let go of the "+" button to stop, 
> then press "+" again to start moving in increments of 1 again.
> Only problem with this is that, since you are holding down the "+" 
> key, you go into "fast scroll" so its hard to just move 10 or 20 
> increments exactly.  Still its faster than waiting for the machine 
> to count from 1 to 127, and its a real fast way to get back to the 
> space at the start of the alphabet when naming kits and songs and 
> stuff.
> 
> This message list is so much better than those two manuals.  I'm 
> sooooo glad its here, thanks to Chris for that one I think.
> Anyway, I'll get arround to posting some of my kits up here at some 
> point, but with a first gig two weeks away, and only half the set 
> prepared, things are a little panicy right now, so until next 
> time....
> 
> Keep fiddling with those knobs guys!!

Andy,
Because pad-songs are sequences, they should always play in time with the currently
selected song tempo. If they don't, then check UT SEQ SETUP/Use Tempo is set to Song
and not Global. Loops are samples and as such, don't have contain any timing information.
I think the only way to get loops in time with the rest of the song is trial and error with
the Pitch setting.

Whilst we're on the subject - another bug (?)
Set the tempo at 100 and record a couple of bars in a user song bank.
Now press the Play button and scroll down by one page.
Here is the setting for the Song tempo during playback (also affects pad-songs)
Start playing the song and then increase the tempo to 200 or 300
Now press the Song button - there's also a tempo setting here! You'll notice it's still
set to 100 even though we already changed the Song tempo. Press the Value+ button once and
the whole song suddenly slows down to 101. It's the old "same setting - different place"
chestnut again. The funny thing here is that altering the tempo setting in the Song menu
affects the tempo setting in the Play menu. They follow each other. But altering the tempo
in the Play menu has no effect on the setting in the Song menu. Weird?

Your pad-song channel frustrations are mentioned in the manual on pg. 21
"The first pad song in the drum kit will be transmitted on the MIDI channel determined by
subtracting 4 from the original channel number"
"The second pad song in the drum kit will be transmitted on the MIDI channel determined by
adding 4 from the original channel number.."

Bye for now....


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Rolf,
I occasionally had the same problems with my kick tower, but I realized
that it happens on some surfaces and not on others.  What I found is that
on a harder surface, such as my basement floor (concrete) with some
indoor/outdoor carpeting, the tower responded in the way you described. 
When I moved it to a softer surface, such as normal carpet or plush rug,
the tower didn't have any problems.  This led me to think that the
problem was resulting from shock.  I tested this theory by placing the
tower back on the concrete floor, but this time I secured the top of it
with my hand (to keep it from vibrating).  Sure enough, I didn't have any
more problems.  It looks like the tower, on double strokes especially,
will react to the second stroke in a different manner than the first. 
This seems to be because the tower is actually in motion after the first
stroke, and is stiking the beater as the beater strikes it.  Does this
make sense?  Hope it helps.  Also, what type of beater are you using?
--Aaron