Hello guys,

I have been drumming for a few years and have now an idea for a live performance with drumming and electronic music.
Because this whole thing should be as mobile as possible I want to integrate in my setup an electronic percussion pad (not a big drumkit) and therefore wanted to ask, if any of you have experiences with that?
My current Setup is Laptop with Ableton Live, Push and an Akai Midi Keyboard. For the percussion parts I now want to add a percussion pad.

I already looked around and asked in a music store and got two recommendations:
1) Yamaha DTX 12 Multi (which is my favorite at the moment, because of 12 playable pads and the inputs!)
2) Roland SPD-SX

Both should have a really good sensitvity and should work for real "drumming" (not only triggering samples).
The intern functions and the storage is not so important because I have the sounds in Ableton and use the pad to play them.

So do you have experiences with that?
Or do you probably know of another model that I should take into consideration, or a new sample pad from which I haven`t heared (NAMM stuff?

Thanks a lot!

 

I want to try hand percussion; using electronic drum pads to send MIDI trigger to apps on my PC/DAW or iPad.

Some of these are suitable for either stick or hand drumming...

Roland 'Handsonic' and Korg 'Wavedrum' are too expensive for me and I don't need all their built in sounds as I have tons of percussion/drum sample libraries already.

Kat Percussion - 'KTMP1' looks like good quality, for either drum sticks or hands.
Simmons - 'Stryke' looks practical, but I cannot find many reviews of it.
I think Roland, Yamaha, Akai... make similar stick/hand percussion pads as well, I don't mean the little square postit-note size pads omly good for finger drumming!

 

There is also the Alesis Performance Pad and Performance Pad Pro.
I do recommend that you actually play the thing before purchasing.

I did try various Roland models, and got me an old Roland Octapad instead of a newer Roland model, simply because the newer rubber pads were surprisingly insensitive at the outer pad area and only worked well if you hit the pad presisely in the middle. Dunno about the others, maybe Yamaha or Alesis are better in this regard?
If I had to choose again I'd get me a used Roland Pad-8 or Pad-80, both have the same quality pads, and that's what counts for me.
A used Pad-8/80 is not without its flaws however, you'll likely have to replace all piezo sensors inside because they get insensitive after a couple of years.

Sample pads are mostly useless, with most products you cannot set up different samples for velocity layers and you'll end up using a sampler of your choice anyway.