Using effects on individual drums

Here are a few thoughts on applying the effects (reverb, delay, & M-FX) to individual drum tones:

In general, effects apply equally to every tone on the Rhythm part; each tone's effects are not individually adjustable from the SETUP menu. However, I've found two ways to get around this.

The first way is to create your own User rhythm set (see manual pp. 105 - 113) and then choose how its individual drum tones receive each effect (page 112). This isn't too hard if you're only planning to adjust the effects on one or two tones -- say, your snare and kick drum. It's a bigger pain to do this for a large number of drum tones, but it can be done, and I suspect the extra effort could inject a lot of personality into a track. But if you do it, keep in mind that your new rhythm set's drum tones will now possess these same effects settings in every other pattern you create with it -- so plan ahead.

The second way is to dedicate one of the other parts (1-7) to the percussion sound you want, and then adjust the part's effects from the SETUP menu. This way is unquestionably easier and won't affect how the rhythm set sounds in other patterns. It also allows you to adjust the tone's volume, pan, etc. more directly. But in doing this you sacrifice a part, so be sure you can live with fewer synth voices.

...Thanks to reader Drewzle for his question about this.