Strike Module Custom Kits

[Hellfire]

WARNING! NO COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL MAY BE POSTED****WARNING! NO COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL MAY BE POSTED****

I decide to program a custom kit using the on board sounds of the Strike module. (see the attached .skt file)

To load this kit into your Strike module you will need to take out your SD card from your module (while it is turned off) and plug it into a PC or Mac. You should see a folder labeled "Kits". Drag and drop the file "Pure Acoustic.skt" into that folder. (which can be found at the bottom of this post, Remember you must be logged in to see the file.)

Once you have the kit copied to your SD card, you should be able to insert your SD card back into your Strike module. Press "F4" (USER) and you should see the kit "Pure Acoustic"

I designed this kit to use velocity switching on the snare rim and all the tom rims. Think of it like pseudo three zone triggers. 
low velocity hits on the rims will give you a "Rim Hit". Harder velocity hits will give you a "Rim Shot".

Let me know what you guys think.

[ChrisK]

I designed this kit you use velocity switching on the snare rim and all the tom rims. Think of it like pseudo three zone triggers. 
low velocity hits on the rims will give you a "Rim Hit". Harder velocity hits will give you a "Rim Shot".

Very nice Idea, did not thought about this.

[Hellfire]

Very nice Idea, did not thought about this.

I may not be a drumming god like all the videos people seem to only care about right now, but I do understand drum modules and I hope I'm able to show people what is possible within the module itself. It's stuff like this that shows the advantage of edrums.

[rhysT]

I decided to program a custom kit using the on board sounds of the Strike module. (see the attached .skt file)

To load this kit into your Strike module you will need to take out your SD card from your module (while it is turned off) and plug it into a PC or Mac. You should see a folder labeled "Kits". Drag and drop the file "Pure Acoustic.skt" into that folder. (which can be found at the bottom of this post, Remember you must be logged in to see the file.)

Once you have the kit copied to your SD card, you should be able to insert your SD card back into your Strike module. Press "F4" (USER) and you should see the kit "Pure Acoustic"

I designed this kit to use velocity switching on the snare rim and all the tom rims. Think of it like pseudo three zone triggers. 
low velocity hits on the rims will give you a "Rim Hit". Harder velocity hits will give you a "Rim Shot".

Let me know what you guys think.

As the size of your tweaked user kit file is small (3KB) I assume it doesn't take much longer to load from SD than the original kit from internal memory.
Also is the instrument/kit editor required to add single or multi-layered external Wav samples into a preset/custom kit if the internal sampler files can be added to any kit currently?

FYI, this worksheet of the Strike kits & instrument combos should be useful for creating custom user kits:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P6G8XfAQ3YCki6nFo1eOsRVEb3LFixcsU9s4kCd_0do/edit?pli=1#gid=1096329833

[Chaser]

I decide to program a custom kit using the on board sounds of the Strike module. (see the attached .skt file)

To load this kit into your Strike module you will need to take out your SD card from your module (while it is turned off) and plug it into a PC or Mac. You should see a folder labeled "Kits". Drag and drop the file "Pure Acoustic.skt" into that folder. (which can be found at the bottom of this post, Remember you must be logged in to see the file.)

Once you have the kit copied to your SD card, you should be able to insert your SD card back into your Strike module. Press "F4" (USER) and you should see the kit "Pure Acoustic"

I designed this kit to use velocity switching on the snare rim and all the tom rims. Think of it like pseudo three zone triggers. 
low velocity hits on the rims will give you a "Rim Hit". Harder velocity hits will give you a "Rim Shot".

Let me know what you guys think.

.skt ?
It may be just a coincidence
.skt was a "seek table information" file for "Shorten"..a program for one of the first for lossless audio file conversions (44100Hz 16bit..RAIFF , AIFF ,wav)  ,early-mid 1990's.back in the days when I had a studio and was going from tape to learning SAW studio..
 Softsound went out of business years and years ago..software abandoned....other formats won out such as FLAC...I may have a copy in my old database(I still have old recordings that were done on old machines and have yet to convert them.) It was cross platform.. a command line tool and barely made it to Windows from DOS to Win 95..maybe 98..but you still had to run it from the command prompt.It was supposed to able to return  the compressed audio file (.shn) back to original form...exactly.

You don't by chance see any files with the .shn extension?

[Hellfire]

As the size of your tweaked user kit file is small (3KB) I assume it doesn't take much longer to load from SD than the original kit from internal memory.

Correct.

I have to say that this is a major improvement over the old DM10. The Strike saves kits individually on the SD card. This should make it much simpler for kit sharing. Of course I wouldn't be surprised if kit compilations start be sold (much like VEX for Roland modules).

Also is the instrument/kit editor required to add single or multi-layered external Wav samples into a preset/custom kit if the internal sampler files can be added to any kit currently?

I haven't sampled anything yet. Right now you can only sample single wav. files. Only the software app will let you do multi-layered. That is way I stress the app must (repeat MUST) be made available. Samples are saved to another fold on the SD card labeled "Samples". If one was to share a custom kit with their own sample, they would need to share both the kit file (.skt) and the sample files (and of course they would need to be placed in the correct folder on the SD card.

[Hellfire]

.skt ?
It may be just a coincidence
.skt was a "seek table information" file for "Shorten"..a program for one of the first for lossless audio file conversions (44100Hz 16bit..RAIFF , AIFF ,wav)  ,early-mid 1990's.back in the days when I had a studio and was going from tape to learning SAW studio..
 Softsound went out of business years and years ago..software abandoned....other formats won out such as FLAC...I may have a copy in my old database(I still have old recordings that were done on old machines and have yet to convert them.) It was cross platform.. a command line tool and barely made it to Windows from DOS to Win 95..maybe 98..but you still had to run it from the command prompt.It was supposed to able to return  the compressed audio file (.shn) back to original form...exactly.

You don't by chance see any files with the .shn extension?

I think you are reading too much into it. The .skt is only 3Kb. There is no audio there. I'm sure the ".skt" just means "Strike KiT". BTW, no there is no .shn file extensions used.

Awesome history reference! I didn't start messing with digital audio till the mid-late 90's. I mostly worked with .wav and .aiff. I was mainly doing audio clean-up work back then. You know taking tape hiss and other background noises out of recordings. Back then I used DART.

[Chaser]

.skt ?
It may be just a coincidence
.skt was a "seek table information" file for "Shorten"..a program for one of the first for lossless audio file conversions (44100Hz 16bit..RAIFF , AIFF ,wav)  ,early-mid 1990's.back in the days when I had a studio and was going from tape to learning SAW studio..
 Softsound went out of business years and years ago..software abandoned....other formats won out such as FLAC...I may have a copy in my old database(I still have old recordings that were done on old machines and have yet to convert them.) It was cross platform.. a command line tool and barely made it to Windows from DOS to Win 95..maybe 98..but you still had to run it from the command prompt.It was supposed to able to return  the compressed audio file (.shn) back to original form...exactly.

You don't by chance see any files with the .shn extension?

I think you are reading too much into it. The .skt is only 3Kb. There is no audio there. I'm sure the ".skt" just means "Strike KiT". BTW, no there is no .shn file extensions used.

Awesome history reference! I didn't start messing with digital audio till the mid-late 90's. I mostly worked with .wav and .aiff. I was mainly doing audio clean-up work back then. You know taking tape hiss and other background noises out of recordings. Back then I used DART.

Yeahh.. I was reading into it too much.I was going by Alesis past history , and the 90's when they were still "Alesis" coming out with the D4/Dm5 modules..etc and thought maybe they had considered shorten to use as an editor,the .skt table for the compressed .shn audio files,like when they used Sqlite table(locker banks) for the (8-10 layer,8-10 Vel samples ea, per instrument) .dsl files in the DM Touch app.Shorten has an extremely small footprint.

I actually found the Shorten program , a couple tweaks in VB to work in current OS without command line,(found I had the beta with GUI) fired it up and created a kit complete with .skt and .shn files...worked surprisingly well.It decompressed the .wav files by almost 60% which is pretty good for lossless.The only issue I had was standard .wav had to be converted for Microsoft .wav
It would have been interesting to check out your programming on the kit...without having a module or editor.

I guess the positive take is it got me off my a** to finally start converting/pulling everything off the old ATA  HDD's before the go bad from just sitting,also found out .shn file are still supported by current software such as Awave studio.
I see DART is still around(nearly 20 yrs) and supports current Windows 10..

The neg=still no Strike editor..lol

[mmdurrant]

I can speak authoritatively on the file format.

Strike Kit Files (SKT) contain a table of 24 entries, referencing each trigger zone and the voice settings for each triggered instrument. There's a 2nd kick trigger specified in the file, but I can't find a way to utilize it... my inclination is it exists purely to make the record count even.  There is also a table of the Instruments used. These are stored as SIN files on the external and internal storage.

Strike Instrument Files (SIN) contain a table of velocity ranges and the table of actual sound samples (standard 44100hz/16 bit PCM WAV files) associated with said velocity ranges. There's some other data I'm trying to figure out - I'm guessing most of it is data on how the sound should be played back, looping, whether previous hits have any effect on the next hit, etc.

The data model is "Kits have instruments have samples."   With the exception of the actual sample files, they're all pretty small. I found one snare where the SIN file was 8kb... many samples + long file names haha.

[rhysT]

Strike Kit Files (SKT) contain a table of 24 entries, referencing each trigger zone and the voice settings for each triggered instrument. There's a 2nd kick trigger specified in the file, but I can't find a way to utilize it... my inclination is it exists purely to make the record count even.  There is also a table of the Instruments used. These are stored as SIN files on the external and internal storage.

Strike Instrument Files (SIN) contain a table of velocity ranges and the table of actual sound samples (standard 44100hz/16 bit PCM WAV files) associated with said velocity ranges. There's some other data I'm trying to figure out - I'm guessing most of it is data on how the sound should be played back, looping, whether previous hits have any effect on the next hit, etc.

Just nine of the Strike preset kits have an instrument sound assigned to the 2nd kick trigger, so it could be useful for adding an extra cymbal, etc.

Also fwiw, after tweaking dynamic velocity pitch settings for most of my DM10 snares, the All memory SysEx file size increased more than I expected.

[ChrisK]

As expected editor,  firmware update 1.2 and Kit & Instrument list, released now
http://www.alesis.com/products/view/strike-pro-kit

    -NEW! Strike Editor Software - User Guide
    -NEW Strike Performance Drum Module - Kit & Instrument List
     -NEW! Strike Performance Drum Module - Firmware and Content Update v1.2
    -NEW! Strike Editor Software v1.0.1 for Windows and Mac OS X

[cmessineo]

I thought I'd share my Arena Rock kit, I modified the 001-Rock Kit.  I think the toms sound better after some adjusting, and I changed the kick to another instrument.  Maybe someone can improve upon it.

[Tommi]

Good Morning. My name is Tomás Lozano and I am Spanish. I have been working hard to create an Excel workbook as an annotation book for the parameters of the Kits and instruments, both for the Strike Module and the Strike Multipad.
This Excel includes everything you need to work:
Updated user manuals
Updated instrument list.
Notebook in pdf to print and take bursts in the study.
Kits parameter sheets.
Parameter sheet and triggers.
Assignment sheets for inputs and outputs.
Instrument Assignment Sheet to Kits ... etc, etc.

[Tommi]

Here I leave the link of the file that is in my Drive for anyone who wants to try the Strikes Notebook:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mGCmL7syk_XjbWQ3144mbMNksz_PcoXp

I hope you enjoy it a lot and it will serve you. It takes a lot of work to do halgo like this.

[Tommi]

I forgot to comment that in order to open the PDF files in the Excel workbook, "THE STRIKES NOTEBOOK v3", you must have ACROBAT READER DC installed on your PC

[stylazyn]

Is there a way when using the editor to sample the entire kit as a demo? It would make it easier to check volumes and tones together.

[Den]

Good morning Tommi. I have downloaded the Strikes Book v3.0 but the Factory Triggers worksheet has not been finished. I have finished it in terms of dropdown tables factory settings content and some formatting. I have sent to private messages but have had no reply. May I pass the complete workbook on to Alesis Strike platforms on Facebook and of course here on Alesis Drummer. Regards, Den.

[bpjacobsen]

Does anyone know of a good site where people can share their custom kits? I already found this one which has a few decent kits: https://megaben300.wixsite.com/protips/downloads

Have not tried this one yet but just wondering if there is access anywhere else to shared kits? I don't have the budget to buy the ones from drum tec right now.

[Hellfire]

Does anyone know of a good site where people can share their custom kits? I already found this one which has a few decent kits: https://megaben300.wixsite.com/protips/downloads

Have not tried this one yet but just wondering if there is access anywhere else to shared kits? I don't have the budget to buy the ones from drum tec right now.

Well, you can share your custom kits here, but I have a feeling that's not what you really what to hear. You are just wanting a place to download more free kits.

Doing a search I found these:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/119TPO_PelEyJSX2-x1UpXx6KuwvE5iEr

They are made by "At The Source Studios" and here's a video with some samples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu9VCPHjNYE

I would highly suggest that if one was to download those free kits, you probably should give the guy a thumbs up on his video for his trouble/time of putting them together.

Also, have you considered putting together your own custom kits using free sample? I bet with a little ingenuity some users would be able to use some of the free samples and free VST plugins that are out there to make custom kits. Heck I found a listing here:

https://drummingreview.com/free-drum-kits/

and here:

https://www.musicgateway.com/blog/how-to/free-drum-kits-download

[Strike85]

I just tried the original post's kit and like it a lot!  Thanks.

[Hellfire]

I just tried the original post's kit and like it a lot!  Thanks.

Your welcome! What I really like about that original kit is the pseud three zone triggering from the Strike's standard two zone triggers.
Velocity switching can be a very powerful tool and is only possible on a module that can assign two or more sounds/instruments to one zone.

[stylazyn]

Does anyone know of a good site where people can share their custom kits? I already found this one which has a few decent kits: https://megaben300.wixsite.com/protips/downloads

Have not tried this one yet but just wondering if there is access anywhere else to shared kits? I don't have the budget to buy the ones from drum tec right now.

I went to this link and both Chrome and Edge blocked the files. 

[Chaser]

The link works fine here..USA..Firefox..

[DannyM]

Hello Chaser,

Are these full kits that work on the Strike Module?

If so,do they follow the same instructions using the Strike SD card Hellfire posted for his custom Kit?

Please let me know when you have time.

Thanks in advance.

[Chaser]

Hello Chaser,

Are these full kits that work on the Strike Module?

If so,do they follow the same instructions using the Strike SD card Hellfire posted for his custom Kit?

Please let me know when you have time.

Thanks in advance.

Yes..Place them in the Kit folder on the external SD Card....also try .."At The Source Studios"..AKA SiREN2173.
He also did a number of Videos for the STRIKE Kit.
Anytime you see .skt files they are Kit files , .sin files are Instrument and go in the Instrument folder.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention..
You can also create sub folders in the main Kit Folder.The STRIKE Module will display them..that way you won't just have a long list displayed on the module.

Example:...
Drum Manufacturers/Brands: DW..Yamaha..Gretsch etc..
Band Names:Beatles..Aerosmith..
Albums ..Songs...
Choose which way you want to organize that works best for you