Roland TD-17 - How to Import Custom Samples & Use Sub/Main Instrument Layers

[@dicey629]

been with my TD17 for 3 years and I did not know the function of SUB. All these time i thought i was just a straight sound 2. didnt know it was for loud. Great video! U earn a sub today!

[@garyloveless3562]

Great video! Thank you so much for putting this info out there. Very clear and detailed instruction!

[@Humanumikey]

oh man you just saved me a lifetime of trying to figure all that out! just ordered the set and I can't wait to sample my buddy's acoustic drum set into my Roland. great vid man!

[@Humanumikey]

@William Perri we actually never got around to it lol. I ended up getting an acoustic set finally. the Roland was too small.

[@Humanumikey]

@William Perri I mean like an actually drum set sorry

[@nickap91]

A note to everyone who's dissatisfied with the built-in sounds of the TD-17 ... This module has now been out long enough that 3rd-party sound expansion packs have started to appear. I've downloaded and tried two in the past couple of days, and of the two, I'd definitely recommend the Drum-Tec "Metal Sound Edition", available at www.drum-tec.com/metal-sound-edition-roland-td-17-download. It gives you 10 new kits added to the 50 built-in Roland kits, and IMHO every one of these kits is better than just about the entire original 50. The snare drums especially are very nice - and it was the Roland snares that I was particularly unhappy with. Even though the Drum-Tec kits are described as "metal", for the most part they should work fine for many genres of music - the only thing I would recommend is saving copies of your favorite ones to empty user slots and then swapping out (or at least re-EQ-ing) the kick drums, which are very hard and aggressive. Note - adding these new kits should not overwrite any custom kits you've created - you add the kits one at a time and specify what user slots they should be saved into, so as long as you write them into empty slots, your saved custom kits shouldn't be affected. The cost of this expansion pack at time of writing is listed on the website as 42 euros, which is about $47; however when I purchased it, I was actually only charged 35.29 euros, or a little under $40 - it may be this is a limited-time offer ...

[@nickap91]

FYI, the other expansion pack I tested was the Series 3 pack from V Expressions Ltd.: www.vexpressionsltd.com/series_3.html. This pack gives you 25 new kits, for a cost of $50 - I wasn't as impressed with these kits as I was with the Drum-tec kits, but there is still some useful stuff there. One note - if you follow the recommended method of installation, which effectively installs the whole set from a backup file, this will retain the Roland preset kits but it will WIPE OUT any custom kits (and I believe also sounds) that you have created. There is an alternate method of installing which involves loading the sounds and kits individually; I believe that if you use this method you should be able to save your custom settings by loading sounds and kits only into unused slots.

[@ultrakool]

14:16 I especially liked how you showed how to tweak a recorded sample to trigger on time.

[@boywonder422]

This was a very clear and easy to follow tutorial, thank you! Super helpful and I'm grateful! :))

[@sweetdragon36067]

Great info. You are right with the instructions being very obtuse. It took me a couple of months to find the internal songs to play along, but really enjoying all the kits in the td 17.

[@mikeydreadmastalski4345]

Thank you for this video, I was having trouble figuring out how to load my samples, you made it easy for me great job ,thanks again ! Peace, Mike

[@pezmoz2835]

Excellent tutorial. I have the TD17 but haven’t yet ventured into the user sample feature yet. Think it’s now time to sample my acoustic Brady kit and load it into the TD17. Thanks for showing me how to do it. Cheers.

[@trevormay7124]

Great video Nick an in depth tutorial on the td17kvx would be a great help to many of us who are a little out of our depth with some of the more technical aspects of the td17? Always amazed that Roland fail to produce a "comprehensive" user tutorial, preferably in line with the user manual,with all their kits surely it would be in their best interests to do so??

[@DrummerCAS]

Great video and explanation. Thank you for uploading this :-)

[@PEP.]

3:15 There is some extreme latency you can see in the waveform - you need to remove all blank audio before the sample to get 0 latency.

[@nickap91]

Yes, but you don't have to edit the sample before importing it to do this - you can do it that way if you want, but you can also remove the latency AFTER the sound has been imported into the TD-17. I go over how to do this starting at about 14:16 in the video. (Obviously if the latency is more than a fraction of a second, you definitely SHOULD remove it before importing, otherwise you are importing a larger-than-necessary sample - you don't want to do that if it can be avoided.)

[@PEP.]

@@nickap91 yeah but you had audacity opened so i figured it would be easy to do it that way

[@igorpom6874]

Finally I found it. Thanks bro!

[@Dozereyes]

Need help!!! when hit assign - hit rim - set sound I want- then go back to kit - the head and the rim have the sound I assigned, not jus the rim. What am I doing wrong?????

[@analog_ape]

Excellent walkthrough, thanks!

[@tedstriker666]

This was very helpful. Thanks man! :)

[@yoelklein7066]

Agree. The moment the sound got into the module it sounded crap. I’m stunned

[@joe.c9308]

How do you assign a sample to a rim?

[@sharktooth5000]

Any advice on recording other (Not Drum) sounds such as water or animal noises? Thank you, very good video. I am getting the Td17kvx this week and am trying to learn everything about it before it arrives.

[@the_foliot]

Sterling Ryder III it’s a great kit. Just bought one for musical theater work and i am loving it. And now learned these new techniques so I’m excited even more. Definitely gonna experiment. As for recording sounds like you want I recommend a field recorder (zoom h4n, h6, etc. Or Tascam or something) or like a shotgun condenser mic would be good too.

[@sharktooth5000]

@@the_foliot Thanks, I will some research on those. Can't wait to get my kit set up.

[@markrockledge8450]

Thanks for Posting!

[@neewollah6875]

Nice video man. I use the voice recording app on my iPhone 8. Email the samples to myself open email on laptop. Save to computer and open with reaper eq the sample to my liking then import to SD and you know the rest. Love it!!!! Take a drum key and iPhone to guitar center and go to town In The cymbal/Snare room recording.

[@the_foliot]

NeewollaH * whoa. I work at GC and just got one of these... totally gonna tip some audio samples from the gear hahaha

[@thebookkeeper3508]

Can you trigger samples from a memory card directly, i.e. without importing to the internal memory?

[@nickap91]

It's been quite a while since I recorded this video and last imported samples - I currently have a set of samples in memory that I am very happy with and have not needed to update in a long time - so I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the answer is no, you have to import them in order to use them.

[@demonocusmetalocus3558]

Wow the td-17 is pretty awesome

[@mike419100]

Thank you! - Very informative and helpful

[@garybeckman3382]

Very informative. Thank you very much. A great help.

[@autobotsNdecepticons]

Thanks for the info. Was wondering if it was possible to layer more than one sample.

[@TheTeekayes]

Hey there! I have been sampling my acoustic drums to use as user samples and I set them up exactly as you described. Works great! Thanks for the tips! So, I've been able to figure out how to do everything but one thing. I can't figure out how to assign my hi hat samples (open, closed, edge, foot, foot splash) in a way where they will work with the hi hat in the same way that the preloaded hi-hats do. The best I have been able to do is assign a sample to the Head and to the Rim in the same way that you do with any of the other drums. Am I missing something? Is there a way to assign my open hi-hat Sound to play when I'm hitting the open hi hat, or my foot splash sound to play when I foot splash, Etc?

[@RobMonty248]

So far I have not found anything to do that also. Sucky since roland obviously can do it, why not with user samples? If ya find out, let me know!

[@TheTeekayes]

@@RobMonty248 I reached out to Roland tech support about it and they let me know that it is in fact not possible to do. Not sure why this is, but its a fairly significant limitation. I just had to settle for one of the stock hit hats and tweak it to sound as close to mine as possible. 🤷‍♂️

[@RobMonty248]

@@TheTeekayes Yea, we need a program to make kits with the type the module recognizes. And something to create multi sound files like the ones their cymbals use. One shot sounds are ok and I can run some of their sounds with mine to change it up some, but the reality is that limitation is kinda rough.

[@chuckmotta2141]

Thanks! This was very helpful.

[@jezusmylord]

DUMDUM DUMDUM DUM DUM DURU MOTA!

[@David-re8cv]

Awesome tutorial, thanks. Any tips though on open/closed hi hat sounds? Or is that even possible with user samples?

[@jadson_cr]

Where I found samples? Thanks

[@hch2023]

I really appreciate it! Thank you sooo much

[@RonnieParisella]

Very helpful, thank you.

[@MrFox1952]

Hi Nick, I just purchased a user sample pack, however my td 17 user sample import bank is full, and i do not want to delete any of those, is there any way of importing the sample pack samples,which are loaded on my sd card, and assign them directly to the kit pads?

[@ShellacScrubber]

Thanks Nick. Some very useful information. I wonder,do you know whether the inbuilt samples are actually truly multi-layered or whether they are created in much the same way as you have shown,using just two samples that get blended at certain velocity level strikes?

[@nickap91]

I haven't looked at that many of them but several that I did look at only have a 'main' instrument and no 'sub' instrument, so I think that means you get the same sound at all velocities.

[@HaiBui-dj6rh]

Why my module not support for .WAV ?

[@giannispan8129]

I have the td17. I want to ask if there is China sound and splash on td17. And if so how can I find these sounds?

[@nickap91]

There is actually a whole set of sounds called "SPLASH/CHINA" with 16 assorted splash and china sounds. So if you choose a kit and select a pad/cymbal to be your splash or china sound, you should be able to use the ASSIGN button and just scroll through to that set of sounds (#195 - #210) to pick one to assign to that pad/cymbal.

[@giannispan8129]

@@nickap91 I have the td17kvx version which means I have two crash. Do you suggest I get another Cymbal for China / splash? Do you have anything else to suggest to me?

[@bobursobirov8287]

hi sound what program did you transfer the flash to

[@nickap91]

The program I used is the free software Audacity.

[@bobursobirov8287]

@@nickap91 please drop if you have roland td 17 please watsapp telegram instagram

[@blakegowan6623]

Brilliant vid. Thanks

[@pelletmobile2]

Thanks for the video, I've been stuck to how to get a import to sound good. The manual is rubbish, but that's Roland on there module booklets. But Great video..

[@chezchezchezchez]

peter pelluet really??? Simple loading makes samples sound like crap?? Damn!!

[@samleggett4008]

really helpful. thanks

[@davidamoroso8399]

How do You run a CD player through the TD-17 module to get drums and music through the headphones at the same time?

[@nickap91]

The best thing is if you have a music player of some kind that has Bluetooth. It's really easy to connect phones and other devices to the TD-17 via Bluetooth - I do that all the time, it's very convenient.

[@michaelperry2446]

excellent tutorial!!!!

[@AtTheSourceStudios]

Thanks for the video man. With only one layer imported though is the machine gunning terrible? Or does the module do something to it to make it play smooth? Otherwise I can imagine it would just machine gun with one layer

[@nickap91]

There is some machine gunning, but I don't find it too bad - the pads are very dynamic so there is a lot of range in the levels of the hits, if not the actual sounds. It is surprising to me that they don't use both layers for their internal sounds - at least you can manually sounds on the sub layer which definitely improves things a bit.

[@BokuPower]

Hey is there anyway to delete songs off of the sd card without having to put the sd card into your pc? My pc doesn't recognize my sd card which obviously makes things impossible.

[@stu7579]

I imported some .wav samples to SD card. Why does the preview file sound so much better than the imported sound on the TD17 module? Any help is greatly appreciated.

[@sweetdragon36067]

Does anyone know of a video showing how to add a song into the internal songs of the TD 17? There are currently 3, but would really like to add more for a good variety: I like the aspect of recording to them to save the combination to the SD drive. I really am a complete Newbie to the world of electronic drums.

[@sonor06able]

Very informative thanx a ton....

[@curtishill109]

Useful.

[@zacfarro8678]

so basically i can use the CY-8 with dual sound layer right ? soft : ride sound hard : bell ride sound can i do that ? waiting your reply :) regards

[@nickap91]

I haven't tried it but I would think that would work fine ...

[@zacfarro8678]

@@nickap91 :) maybe if you have free time...can you tried it and maybe make a video.... like i'm planning to buy this drum kit but i'm still thingking hard about that ride bell sound on CY-8 because on TD1DMK CY-5 cymbal can produce bell sound at certain velocity but this TD17KL can't produce the same experience... thanks and regards

[@ahmeterensevinc2232]

@@zacfarro8678 I tried it with my TD17-KV which also has the CY8 cymbals. And it gives you bell sound when you hit hard (like the TD1DMK). But I think if you really want a bell zone you can get the CY13 cymbal (which haa 3 zones) and use the CY8 (previous ride) as a 2nd crash

[@yyzyyzyyzyyzyyz]

Very cool vidéo very helpful thanks a lot !

[@mattdrewdrums]

You already know I'm about to import a sample of Matt Garstka's fat stack and equilibrium china.

[@BumpNrun69]

Do you know if this can be done with a 3rd party software such as, "Superior Drummer 3" - or -"Steven Slate Drums"? Where you would build your sound samples in their programs then import samples into the Roland Module, (so you don't have to be connected to a LAPTOP from Module, all the time).

[@nickap91]

You would have to be able to export the sounds from the 3rd party program as WAV files. I don't know if this is possible with the programs you mentioned, but that would be the way to do it.

[@curtisdammann5043]

@@nickap91 It is possible; you can multi-out the SP Drummer mixer and record the outs in individually in a DAW and then export the stems as WAVs

[@roelie2104]

Bump N Run i have steven slate drums 5 and all superior drummer 3 kits in my 2box drumit 3, now iam gonna try to convert a 2box file ( dsnd ) to wav file and then copy that file into the td17 brains see if that works...

[@daveyboy8907]

Can you tell me of some good free sounds?? thanks

[@nickap91]

I tried a bunch of free sounds and wasn't especially happy with any of them. The best sounds I have found are on the Drum-Tec Metal Edition: www.drum-tec.com/metal-sound-edition-roland-td-17-download - the whole set costs 42 euros which is about $45 and it is worth every penny, IMHO. These are pretty much the only sounds I use now, they're way better than any others I've tried.

[@marlonalcoreza69]

great video=) thanks

[@kade9012]

had the kit for 6-7 months and ive been struggling to try to make the preloaded kits sound nice. i gave up lol

[@k.thompson8549]

I’ve got a TD6KV, it took me about 3 years to create some passable kit sounds :), but I think I actually prefer them to these recent modules, even though there seem to be more adjustment capabilities.

[@k.thompson8549]

@Bill Perri ...on and off :)

[@micgauth]

thanks so much for doing this.

[@briank2434]

Hi it will take 64GB too . I have the micro mini with the 4in1 large sd card usb stick for pc/cell etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the 128gb works too.

[@nickap91]

Good to know. Basically the limitation is not going to be how large a card it will take, but how many internal 'slots' it has for custom sounds - I believe it's only 100. Most of the samples I've loaded are only a couple of 100 kb each, so they take up very little storage space. So even a very small capacity card would probably be all you'd really need - but it's good to know that if you only have a 64gb or 128gb card handy, they should work fine too.

[@lhb4all]

Yep surprisingly it does work with 128gb since Im using one on my TD 17 KVX.

[@bean5542]

Where did you download your samples from?

[@nickap91]

That's a really good question. I made some myself - for example I really liked one kit from my old Alesis DM10 module, so I recorded all the sounds from that kit and imported them into the TD-17. But I've also found decent sounding samples at nyx.meccahosting.com/~a00005c1/drums/sample_lib.html, at juddmadden.com/drum-samples.html, at rekkerd.org/nsa-custom-series-drumkit-free-acoustic-drumkit-samples-by-dean-aka-nekro/, and at rw5samples.com. Some of these are free, some you have to pay for - but none of them are very expensive.

[@bean5542]

@@nickap91 thank you so much man, appreciate it :)

[@bean5542]

@@nickap91 So any drum sample that is a wave file can be transported to the td17 module? Also is there a noticeable difference in quality when using samples rather than the onboard sounds?

[@nickap91]

I believe TD-17 supports 16-bit and 24-bit wav files. As long as the samples are good quality without much background noise, I don't hear any quality difference with the built-in sounds.

[@AMPProf]

Install on computer LMMS (free daw)/Fl Studio (paid daw) ; Audacity (free Audio editing etc Software)...Various sounds from daw just need to be exported as wave files. Then build your kit. best locations to build kit is inside a daw... then create waves.

[@eziooo2011]

Hi nick! where do you find free samples?

[@nickap91]

I actually answered this one a few weeks back - if you scroll down you should find it. :)

[@joseffus5432]

Thanks a LOT mate

[@helenpowell7908]

You may need a better monitor with an equalizer.

[@daveyboy8907]

Thank you O need to do this.. Hey add a 13r ride.. I bought one on ebay for under 200.. 3 trigger cymbals

[@paullean5689]

where did you get custom samples?? im looking for better snare sounds. please let me know

[@nonprophetsband]

Check in the comments below, I included links for several free or inexpensive web sources for samples a few months ago. :)

[@philippelevrero8822]

Traduction explicatif en Français !!?

[@Yoavlacho]

thanks

[@EEZAL]

I’m not to impressed with the onboard kits either . Yes you can tweak but most of the kits are useless to me plus there’s a limited range of snares toms and FX ... pretty sure my previous TD-15 had more onboard . Thanks for this video .

[@roelie2104]

EEZAL you need a drumtec sound pack for good sounds...