Value of Drum Kits

[Steve_Kelley]

As a new keyboard player of two months from the piano world, I'm trying to understand the value of the Drum Kit voices. As a hobbyist, I don't see much value in them. (Of course, the only thing I think you can do with them is substitute as a drummer when playing with a group which is not my future. My understanding of their use may be a little primitive.)

The urgency of my questioning their value is that I've run out of voice wave space for expansion packs. What is apparent is that drum kits hog a lot of space, so I'm thinking of deleting them from my expansion pack installation. I'm perfectly content to just have the preset drum kits. My only fear is that I'm not sure if this causes any problems.

Are drum kits completely independent entities or do other things, most particularly styles, depend on them? If I delete a kit, will some styles lose some of their drum sounds? If so, is there an easy way to determine which styles use which drum kits?

Thanks in advance for any enlightenment that you can give me on this topic.

[Joe H]

Expansion packs that include styles will use the expansion pack drum kits with different percussion sounds not found in other drum kits.  If you delete those drum kits you may not find a preset drum kit that will play correctly.

Joe H

[overover]

Hi Steve,

first of all,

a "Drum Voice" in an Expansion Pack can be a "standard" Drum KIT, but it could also be used for the Drum Part of Styles or Multi Pads which are based on so called "REX" files (.rx2). In this case, such a Drum Voice contains "sliced" Audio Loops on certain keys. Such Drum Voices can require a lot of Expansion Memory, but they are absolutely necessary if you want to use the respective Styles or Multi Pads that are based on these Voices.

One way to find out which drum kits are used in a specific Style is to load the Style on your keyboard, then open the mixer and check which Drum Voices are used in Style Parts (Channels) 9 and 10.


P.S.
On the pop-up window called up by touching "Menu" on the Voice Selection display, you can set the "Voice Number" to be shown in the Voice Selection display (next to each Voice).


Best regards,
Chris

[panos]

Hi Steve and wellcome to the forum 

When you see a drum kit you should always keep in mind that for each of the 88 keys of the keybed (-+ octaves included or sometimes drum kits use fewer keys)
a drum kit is using each key for a specific drum sound.
Let's say I make a drum kit which I call it Heavy Metal kit and in the note B3 I have a snare drum sound,on the note A6 I have a bass drum sound etc.

When a style is playing,it can read those notes to produce the sounds of the drum.
(Every sound of the style parts is written as notes).
If I delete this drum kit from my keyboard,as Joe said, the style will choose another drum kit to play and on that drum kit the note A6 is no longer a bass drum sound but a cymbal sound and the style now may sound really funny.

Same thing will happen with the other sounds.
e.g a deleted violin from from an expansion pack.

So you have to know which styles are using those drum kits and if you use them or not as Chris said because drum kits are crucial elements of a style.

Of course everything can be replaceable in a style and you can copy the drum parts from one style to another,make some changes to existing drum style parts or even create a new drum part.