Very cool URRR and rhysT!!!
It's always cool to have advice on getting the most satisfaction as possible out of such a powerful system. Powerful systems often require a good dose of patience and practice to fine-tune to ones liking!
So I'd like to add to this a little from my perspective as well, just to add my two cents worth of experience getting going:
Default Kit
I play live with two bands and it was very important to me to get a really good Default kit that I can rely on as my main drum kit. It didn't take me long to find something that I thought was a close match to what I wanted. So with that kit selected, I stored that kit to one of the User Kit slots and gave it an easy-to-find name. I chose "Dartanbeck Default"
After the kit was stored, I navigated to it under the Drumkit menu and began trying out various other drum sounds in each of the drums, rims, and cymbals. For example, I wanted Tom 1's rim to be a cowbell and Tom 2's rim to be a Vibraslap. So those were a perfect place to start. During this whole process, I made sure to go through each of the sounds in the instrument class I was working on, so I could gather a good idea of everything at my disposal. There are a LOT of sounds in this module and I wanted to gain a good understanding of what I had to choose from.
Once I get some changes made how I like them, I would Store the kit back to the same slot and name to save it. I still tweak this kit sometimes. It's been an evolving kit since the day I bought it and it just keeps getting better.
Making Variations
With a good default kit made, I can store it into a new slot, giving it a memorable name of the variations I want to make, like "Bongo Tops" which replaces the above mentioned cowbell and vibraslap with bongo sounds. Since I've made this from a copy of a kit I already use, it matches perfectly live. The only differences might be if I made this kit before making further tweaks to the Default kit. It has turned out that I often like these differences as a reminder of a previous kit. Which is what brings up the next one:
Storing a Backup
I like to keep a saved version of my default kit somewhere in the User Kit slots. I call mine Dartanbeck Save. Mine is fairly old now and, when I go back and play the kit, I commend my choices when I first made this default kit. Many of the changes sound less attractive through the headphones, but deal with the sound through the PA much better than this awesome sounding original kit.
Loading the Default Kit on Module Start Up
I've recently started messing around with the idea of recording custom sequences that I can trigger on and off during live sessions. Before I even got into that, I've discovered something cool - which is the title of this tip.
I don't want to get rid of the Sequence #1: Jalapeno, but I need to change it. So before making any changes, I stored a copy of it to the last User Sequence slot and gave it the name Jalapeno, just as it was named originally. Now I rename the #1 Sequence to "Blank" and Edit both the Drum and ACCOMP tracks, deleting them to make them all blank.
Here's the key part: Before storing my new blank sequence, I tap the Drumkit button and scroll to my Default kit - THEN I store the Sequence as #1 "Blank" (or is it #0? - it's the first one anyway)
Now every time I turn on my module, my Default kit is loaded and ready to play with no further scrolling. Furthermore, when I accidentally hit the Play button, there are no performances in the Sequence that will play through our PA! I accidentally started a Sequence during live performances two or three times. Not cool! LOL
