Pads

Head shot

Strike the head of the pad.

With certain snare drum sounds or pads (such as the PD-12P), the tone changes naturally as you move the strike point from the center of the head toward the rim.

Rim shot

Strike the head and the rim together.

This gives you a different sound (a rim tone) from head shots.

Cross stick

Strike the rim only—do not touch the head.

The sounds differ depending on your playing technique. For example, you can hear a rim sound when playing a rim shot, or a cross-stick sound when playing with a cross-stick technique.

Connect a rim shot pad (such as the PD-12P) to the “SN” cable, or connect a digitally-connected pad that supports the cross stick technique (such as the PD-14DSX or PD-140DS), and assign it to the snare.

For the PD-14DSX or PD-140DS, strike the rim while placing your hand on the head.

Playing with brushes

You can use brushes to scrape the head (brush sweep).

Either connect a pad (such as a PD-12P) with a mesh head to “SN” of the dedicated connection cable, or connect a pad (such as the PD-14DSX or PD-140DS) that supports digital connection and assign it to the snare.

For drum kits on which the snare brush sound is assigned, you can use the brush sweep technique when Brush Switch is “ON”.
Ø “Configuring various drum kit-related settings (KIT OPTIONS)”

Changing the tone according to the nuances of the rim shot

With certain snare sounds and pads (such as the PD-12P), the nuance of the sound changes when you slightly change how you play the rim shots.

Normal rim shot

(Open rim shot)

Strike the center of the head and the rim at the same time.

Shallow rim shot

Strike the head near the rim and the rim itself at the same time.

The tom sound does not support the use of the shallow rim shot technique.

Using the strainer (PD-14DSX)

For snares with a strainer (throw-off) lever (the PD-14DSX), operate the strainer lever to “attach” the snare wires to the snare (bottom side; ON) or to “detach” them (OFF) for a specific snare sound.

The volume of the operating sound changes according to how fast you operate the lever. Aside from the snare wire operation, you can also assign functions to the strainer for controlling effects and so on.

You can assign a variety of functions to the strainer, such as turning the strainer knob to adjust the tension of the snare wires, or pressing the knob to play or stop a song.

ØFor details, refer to “Configuring the strainer”.

How strike points are detected on digital drums

For digitally connected pads, the unit detects the position at which you strike the pad (positional sensing).

On the snare drum, the sound changes according to the strike position, such as when striking the center of the pad face versus the edge, or the right side versus the left side.