Yamaha DTX-MULTI 12 Cheat Sheet

In my capacity as Music Director for the Dundas Concert Band, I often have to work within immovable constraints.

One of those was the fact that while the band owned a pair of timpani, it was not physically feasible nor safe to move them up and down the stairs at the Dundas Town Hall week after week, and to and from venues.

Before I arrived, the previous band director had purchased a Yamaha DTX-MULTI 12 to work around this problem.

Here's a short list of reference steps for doing typical things with the unit.

Changing the pitch of notes

The timpani patch by default comes pitched in C. Obviously this doesn't scale since there are a ton of other key signatures your music might be pitched in 😉.

To change the pitch of a specific pad:

  1. Press VOICE
  2. Strike the pad whose pitch you'd like to change
  3. Press the right arrow until the screen reads to VCE2-1
  4. Enter
  5. Use +/- keys to adjust pitch

Save a customized kit to a user kit

The unit comes with 63 "user" kits that can be saved in onboard memory. Once you've customized a kit, save it like this:

  1. Press STORE
  2. Use the +/- keys to select the user preset desired (e.g. U001)
  3. Press ENTER twice, observe the pretty little LED animation, and you're good to go.

Rename a kit

Here's how to rename a kit.

  1. Press KIT to return to kit selection
  2. Press right arrow to KIT2 Common
  3. ENTER
  4. Press arrow keys to navigate to 2-3 Name
  5. ENTER
  6. Use arrow keys and +/- to rename the kit.
  7. Hit STORE when ready to save

Adjust sensitivity

We found during rehearsal that the default "stick" sensitivity was not suitable for playing with proper soft dynamics. The floor was essentially mezzo-forte. This might be due to the unit being used (and/or abused?), but changing the default velocity curve to the "hand" preset allowed us to achieve softer dynamics without sacrificing anything.

To do this, at any time, hold SHIFT, press UTILITY, and use +/- to select the HAND preset. This temporarily sets the sensitivity. To set it permanently:

  1. Hit KIT
  2. Use arrow keys to select KIT7 Other
  3. ENTER
  4. Use arrow keys to navigate to KIT7-6 TrgSetupLink
  5. +/- to change this to P04 (Hand)
  6. STORE to persist for the selected kit

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