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One of the things that the Triton excels
at is its ease of use, especially when using
the models with the large touchscreens. Editing
programs and combinations is relatively straight
forward, and the most common parameters are
often available all on one screen.
This, however, does not apply to drum kits.
Although it makes logical sense to have editing
and creating drum kits available under “Global”,
it seems a little counterintuitive. Nevertheless,
there it is and once you get the hang of it
is pretty easy to do.
When is a drum kit not a drum kit?
One of the things that makes it confusing
(or confusing for me at least) was that the
drum kits you create at the Global level,
you cannot play. If you create a drum kit
you do not see it listed as an available program.
What you really have created is a multi-sample.
And like a multi-sample, it’s not going
to make any sound until you use it in a program.
This is why you see two completely different
lists from the “Drums” section
of programs from the list you see under Global/Drum
Kits.
Starting from Scratch
We are going to start with a blank drum kit
as this is the best way to run through the
whole process of creating a kit, so you can
make your own. However, we are going to stick
with built-in sounds for now, but there is
no reason you could not use sounds that you
sample or import from .WAV format.
So to begin, press “Global” from
the main selector buttons and then select “Menu” (underneath
the data wheel). From this screen select “Drum
Kit”. Up at the upper left select the
arrow next to “Drumkit” to see
a list of available kits. You could modify
any of the standard kits here but we are building
one from scratch so let’s select kit
48, as this is the first User kit. You can
probably see other blank kits in there, but
those are slots reserved for kits that come
with the expansion boards, so it is best to
stick with a User kit to avoid your work being
accidentally overwritten.
Unlike creating a multi-sample, every key
on your new kit is already assigned a sample “BD-Dry
1”. I have come to hate BD-Dry 1 as
it sounds whenever I have not done what I
think I have done and there is no sample there.
My own personal problems aside however, we’ll
assume that an entire keyboard full of the
same bass drum sample was not what you were
looking for, so we’ll assign some new
ones.
Select the field “KEY”, (figure
1, item A) and then using
either the data wheel
or buttons move to whatever
key you want to start
with. The keyboard chart
above will show the key
you currently have selected
by showing a grey pattern
over it (figure 1, item
B).
Now let’s select the sample we want
to sound. If you are familiar
with creating programs
with Double oscillator
types this will look
familiar to you, as each
key is automatically
mapped with High and
Low velocity samples.
However by default the
velocity switch is set
to 001 (figure 1, item
C), so basically you
have a single sample, unless
you modify this parameter.
By pressing the arrow next to the sample
you can select which sample
you wish to sound here.
(figure 2) When you go
to the select screen
you see category sections
like you do when selecting
programs or combinations,
but now they are all
different types of drum
sounds. And the Triton
has a LOT of sounds on
board. As you touch on
each sample you can audition the sound by
pressing the key you are mapping. When you
have chosen the sample you want, just hit
OK and assigning the sample is done.
Now the basics of creating a drum kit would
just be to repeat that process over and over
again until you have filled the entire keyboard,
or whatever amount you want.
Before navigating anywhere else be sure to
select “Write Drum Kit” from the
drop down menu otherwise your work will be
lost when you turn off the Triton. You may
also want to “Rename Kit” so that
you don’t overwrite your new kit the
next time you decide to create a drum kit
from scratch.
So to hear your new drum kit, remember that
you will need to use it in a program. You
can either use an already existing drum program
or create your own from scratch. If you create
one from scratch be sure to select “Drum
Kit” as your oscillator type, otherwise
you will not see your drum kit (or any drum
kit for that matter) as an available sample
set.
Dig Deeper
So now you have created your first drum kit
and banged on it for awhile lets do a little
more.
First of all, let’s pay attention to
the box next to the key selector
that says “Assign” (figure 1,
item D) and has a checkbox
next to it. When you
unselect this box, you
may think that this key
will no longer sound, it doesn’t
have a sample assigned
to it, but no. This key
will now sound with the
next available assigned
sample down the keyboard
and pitch it upwards
to reach the key that
you have selected. Huh?
So if you unselect “Assign” on
C#, this key will now sound
whatever sample is assigned
to C natural, but pitched
up one-half step. This
is useful when you want
to create a range of
toms from one sample.
Just select the tom sample
for the bottom-most sample
key, and unselect “Assign” from
the rest. Then the toms sample
will sound chromatically
upwards as far as you
want, allowing you to
do those long Neil Pert
fills you have always
dreamed of.
Applying Modifications
Around each sample you see sets of parameters
similar to what you see in the Oscillator
screen in a program, Tune, Transpose, cutoff,
etc. You can modify any of these parameters
any way you want but the thing to remember
is that these will be applied in addition
to whatever programs parameters are already
there. So if the program has a cutoff that
starts with 30, and you set the cutoff at
20 in your drum kit, it will now be 50.
Building Exclusive Sets
Another thing you will probably want to do
is create exclusive sets. These
are sets of sample that
will stop any sample
from sounding whenever
another sample from the
same exclusive group
sounds. The most common
example is open/closed
hi-hat. You want the
open hi-hat sample to
stop sounding whenever
the closed hi-hat key
is pressed. To do this
you will need to select
the “Voice
Mixer” page for each
sample and select the “Exclusive Group”.(figure
3, item A) It doesn’t matter what you
select here as long as both
the hi-hat samples use the
same group. You will want to use a separate
group for each set of samples
that you want to make exclusive.
DAW’s and Effects
Most of the other parameters in these screens
are fairly self-explanatory
so I will leave you to
play around with them.
But I will point out
one last feature of drum
kits that are unique.
Custom drum kits allow
you to assign each sample
to one of the five effects
busses (figure 3, item
B). So depending how
you set up your effects,
you could select from
five different effects.
Or if you set the effects
up serially, you could
run some samples through
all five, and some others
just through the last
two. For example you
may want to run all the
samples through compression,
but only snare and toms
through the reverb. And
of course you can assign
different to different
outputs, so that you
can record h-hat, kick,
and snare separately
for later mixing.
Conclusion
Custom drum kits are a powerful part of the
Triton, although they are harder to get at
than most things in the Triton. But once you
put a little effort into it, you will be greatly
rewarded.
Click here to send questions or comments
to Brent Hoover regarding this
article.
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