By the way, must compliment you on the way you did your video. It’s very well organized very well thought out I’m a teacher/educator. Whatever you wanna call that in music and you made it very accessible for me. I’m not a technician at all and I was able to understand what you did and that helped me a lot, as one of the question have you heard anything about the LEKATO PD 705 I think. IT’S A REAL CHEAP ONE AND I TRIED GETTING A HOLD OF THE COMPANY BUT THERE’S NO CONTACT NUMBER THAT I FOUND IT’S ONLY AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AND I’VE SEEN SOME OF THESE. THEY ARE COPIES OF THE OTHER ONE THAT YOU HAVE THE SAME THING ONLY I’VE SEEN THEM FOR LIKE 50 BUCKS $100 AND I DON’T WANNA PUT MY MONEY ON SOMETHING THAT’S NOT GOOD BUT I HAVEN’T LOOKED UP ANY REVIEWS YET SO THAT’S ANOTHER ONE TO BE AWARE OF, I think this is just more well known a lot more information about their gear
Actually considering to buy one and your video was simply awesome and helpful to know more about the product other than the basic description. Thanks mate!
Very well explained rather than type a whole bunch of things. I find it much easier to have a conversation or we can go back-and-forth and I won’t take too much of your time but I would love it if I could talk to you for a few minutes over the phone is that possible? I am on Pacific time I live in Los Angeles, please let me know brother I appreciate it. Just have a couple of quick questions about not about the machine exactly but more about recording samples. I have a bunch of indigenous ancient Mexican percussions and sound effects and I want to access them at gigs when I am unable to bring all that gear it’s a lot of instruments and some of them are really big
Hey Martin, sorry for the delay! For your specialized sounds, I might not be the best person to respond on recording, but I can say that if you can get your files into a WAV format you can get them into the SamplePad! I myself have used samples of orchestral chimes, timpani, dulcimer, and other large instruments, so I'd definitely endorse the approach to save some physical space!
Hi Jay! Excellent video! Really informative and it provided a lot of info I wanted to know. Do you have an idea about the maximum size/duration a sample must be?
Glad to hear it! From the manual: "You can assign up to 48 MB worth of samples per kit", and each "Kit" (page) is comprised of 8 pads each. I've found my drum sounds are usually .5 MB or less, but I've also put in long-decay sounds and even hi-res loops of like 20 MB each. I haven't been too scientific about it, but I also know size/duration also impacts the load time of the kit when you switch, so that may be a consideration of how you arrange your Kit layouts. I put in chime sounds for a Kit once (with like a 10-second decay) and it took quite a while to load when switching sets!
I've let some other team members use it, and since then I think there's been a little bit of re-triggering across two pads. I've just set the sensitivity down a little bit, and it works just fine.
Thank you for all the tips! I just ordered one. Won an auction on eBay for $207. Hopefully this is a good entry point for me into electronic drums. Ordering it mostly to use as a practice pad, but do expect to integrate it into my acoustic kit as well. What triggers did you end up buying?
Awesome! // My local music store had generic piezo triggers (for a snare and floor tom), and a bass drum "ddrum" trigger. I mainly just use snare+kick triggers for opening and closing effects, similar to hi-hat groupings.
I hesitate to reply, as electrical specs continue to perplex me, and I don't believe I have additional adapters to test with. But given the non-trivial pricepoint of this unit, I'd suggest probably purchasing a replacement adapter from Alesis.
2 года назад+1
Thanks very useful!!! Do you have your bassdrum&snare trigger connected to the pad exits? can you use the bassdrum trigger output to connect these external triggers?
That function *is* supported, and I've played with it! There are 16 "Mute Groups" that you can optionally assign to each sample (ex: open HH and closed HH both assigned to Mute Group 1). Any channel/sample can be assigned to a Mute Group, including the input for a kick trigger.
Great video for this Jay! Btw i have a question and maybe you could gladly help. As i am really frustrated how am I gonna make it work regarding the hi-hat. Open hat was assigned into pad 8 for example, i am using the avatar foot pedal, plugged into hi-hat and selected “variable” Assigned closed hat sound to the pedal once pressed I wanted to assign a closed hat sound on pad 8 when the pedal is pressed, but it gives me the open hat sound. =(
I know for many foot switches/pedals, there is a polarity switch, which may be contributing to your opposite behavior. See if your pedal has a switch (like a small, hidden dip switch).
I don't play with a click live (for certain reasons) but I'm not a drumcomputer xD. It's always possible that during a song I shift a few bpm. If I'd want to trigger a tambourine loop at the end of a song. But I'm not sure that I'm in the same tempo as the loop, would it be possible to use one of the pads as a tap in to set the loop bpm?
To my knowledge, none of the Alesis products could do that. They would just playback a loop at the tempo (and duration) it was recorded. I haven't dug into it, but if anything perhaps the full-price Roland SPD would have the computing power and features for something like tempo warping.
As another possible solution: perhaps you could set up another loop prior to your tambourine loop, with something subtle like hand claps or something. You could trigger that beforehand, and use it to tweak your tempo up or down prior to the full-on tambourine sample. It would take some rehearsing for knowing how to adjust to it, however. But any way you'd do it without a full-ensemble in-ear click, assuming you're the drummer, you'd need to be able to be in control to push/pull the tempo prior to the sample anyways.
@@JayJohnJordan thanks for your reply. I guess my best option wil be playing with a metronome again. The reason we stopped using one is because during a lot of songs (I'm the drummer) I dont play and the rest of the band don't have inears and they can't really keep the same tempo. But I'll try and find a solution to that
I’d first try to rule out signal issues. Does your pedal work with the other SamplePad inputs? Does the pedal work with other equipment? Then finally, do other pedals (or sources of input) trigger the same SamplePad hi-hat input? If yes to any of these, perhaps something with the jacks may be incompatible for some reason?
@@JayJohnJordan i forgot to tell that i was trying with HH controller of yamaha DTX. But if i put the jack in to “foot switch” slot and i press the pedal, it actually works for stop any sound immediately after i hit another pad. So i think yamaha HH pedal can still works for Alesis SPD. But i havent found the problem yet. Maybe you can give me a recommendation of HH pedal controller that can match with alesis SPD ^_^ Thank you
@@alfri_juntax8093 Oh! I think this is is probably expected behavior for the hi-hat input. Check out the manual and learn about "mute groups". In the context of hi-hats it should make sense, but you may need to adjust your other channels to get out of a mute group. Either that, or look at the Mode (POLY, STOP, HAT, etc.)
I actually just use a sustain pedal for a MIDI keyboard, which works just fine for me. But because it's merely on-off, there's no velocity, but I'm sure you could shop around for other pedals with a 1/4" output.
How do you fix the pads when they stop working, one by one? Apparently nobody knows how to fix anything on one of these units, so pay four times more for the Roland, because it will literally outlive four of these.🤷
You're not crazy: there's no speaker on this device, just the audio output from the main-out on the back. If you plug in a 1/4" cable to the L jack, it will work through a speaker or amp.
Hello, Jay. Could you please guide how to create loops ?? I'm currently using the inbuilt drum kits of SAMPLEPAD PRO and trying to create a layered loop by setting the MODE of each pad of a kit to LOOP. The problem is that every pad's loop has a different tempo. Please help me fix it.
Hi Dishant; that could be a big topic, depending on what you want to do. But basically, if you create something in your DAW of choice (at your BPM of choice), export it, and cut it off right at the end of a measure, it should make a loop. You can then put that into your SamplePad, and loop to your heart's content! As far as the content of a loop in a DAW, this looks like it might cover some things to think about (in FL Studio): ruclips.net/video/aUwSzbyNvLE/видео.html
Yup! You could use the USB jack on the SamplePad as a controller, to then trigger sounds through Ableton. You can map different sounds to different keys/inputs, check out this example: ruclips.net/video/zoAoddp0t6c/видео.html
Can you guys teach us how to set up an HH trigger so that it links to a pad (ie Pad #7) so that it gives that pad the open/close effect? As of now, they act like 2 separate triggers and don't seem to be linked.
I got mine and I’m using 10 minute loops I put them through the converter and it’s still saying it is to large. Would anybody know why? And if so how do I fix it?
Question on the top 2 pads (2 smaller top pads - the hi hat or cymbal sounds) those 2 pads. I have the same samplepad. How do you set those 2 pads that you don't have to hit them that hard. I found that i have to hit them pretty hard to make any sound. and then if they do.. it's full volume loud. (there's no soft tap or mid level trigger for the 2 smaller top pads)
Riiiiiight, I've been in the same boat for [ride] cymbal sounds. :( My guess is that the designers modeled these pads to be more like "rims" than "cymbals", as they seem to not be overly responsive. For those pads, I've just simply turned the Sens up, but turned the sample Lev very low. Or, look if I'm really motivated, I'll mount a single external pad (~$60 used) on a stand and use that for better responsive range.
@@JayJohnJordan i have 2 external pads, using snare and a extra sound pad. Also got the hi hat pedal and a bass pedal. But ill play with the sensitivity.
New to Electronics.....if i wanted to load 'samples' or 'loops' musical segments that were 16 beats or more, does the user choose the length of the sample or are there timing limitations per sample or per pad ? Thanks!
You just load a .wav file into the pad's slot, so it's not dictated by tempo, just file size. Referencing the user guide, it seems the only technical limitation is that you're limited to 48 MB total *per kit* (page) for all samples loaded. I've loaded loops up to 2 minutes long before no problem... HOWEVER the more/longer samples are loaded, the longer it will take to load before *any* samples are available for playback. So just make sure you switch over the page early enough before the next song in your set, and you'll be set.
Thanks for this video Jay, I just got a samplepad pro last week and haven't had much time with it making samples yet. I Also purchased a laptop stand which is ideal for the machine, and not too expensive (here in Ireland I paid €35). The website address for USA recommends a $49 price but I'd say you'd probably get it a lot less expensive if you shopped around. It's really sturdy and solid for some serious drumming! Here's the web address www.adamhall.com/shop/aw-en/pro-audio/stands/laptop-stands/5532/slt-003 Thanks again and God Bless O:)
More out of COVID boredom and less of a true demo, I uploaded this awhile back: ruclips.net/video/ewWy4papj2k/видео.htmlsi=ujlQtQ2ATa5nhMl1 Note these were custom drum sounds, and you can load whatever sounds you'd like on it via SD card. This was also specifically trying to use it like a drum set 😂
thank you, nice informative video
By the way, must compliment you on the way you did your video. It’s very well organized very well thought out I’m a teacher/educator. Whatever you wanna call that in music and you made it very accessible for me. I’m not a technician at all and I was able to understand what you did and that helped me a lot, as one of the question have you heard anything about the LEKATO PD 705 I think. IT’S A REAL CHEAP ONE AND I TRIED GETTING A HOLD OF THE COMPANY BUT THERE’S NO CONTACT NUMBER THAT I FOUND IT’S ONLY AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AND I’VE SEEN SOME OF THESE. THEY ARE COPIES OF THE OTHER ONE THAT YOU HAVE THE SAME THING ONLY I’VE SEEN THEM FOR LIKE 50 BUCKS $100 AND I DON’T WANNA PUT MY MONEY ON SOMETHING THAT’S NOT GOOD BUT I HAVEN’T LOOKED UP ANY REVIEWS YET SO THAT’S ANOTHER ONE TO BE AWARE OF, I think this is just more well known a lot more information about their gear
Great video! Just thinking about buying this one, now I'm more certain. Thank you ;)
Actually considering to buy one and your video was simply awesome and helpful to know more about the product other than the basic description. Thanks mate!
Awesome! Just what I hoped to hear from this video. Feel free to share your experience, if you get this or another pad!
Very well explained rather than type a whole bunch of things. I find it much easier to have a conversation or we can go back-and-forth and I won’t take too much of your time but I would love it if I could talk to you for a few minutes over the phone is that possible? I am on Pacific time I live in Los Angeles, please let me know brother I appreciate it. Just have a couple of quick questions about not about the machine exactly but more about recording samples. I have a bunch of indigenous ancient Mexican percussions and sound effects and I want to access them at gigs when I am unable to bring all that gear it’s a lot of instruments and some of them are really big
Hey Martin, sorry for the delay! For your specialized sounds, I might not be the best person to respond on recording, but I can say that if you can get your files into a WAV format you can get them into the SamplePad! I myself have used samples of orchestral chimes, timpani, dulcimer, and other large instruments, so I'd definitely endorse the approach to save some physical space!
I Have The
Alesis Sample Pad Pro 4
Alesis Sample Pad Pro 8
And Alesis Multipad Great Fun Thank You Alesis
Try Useing Dolls Sticks From The Crafe Store your Pads Would Last longer Then Real Drum Sticks
Thanks for the Excel file! You've made my life much easier.
Nice presentation I like
Hi Jay! Excellent video! Really informative and it provided a lot of info I wanted to know. Do you have an idea about the maximum size/duration a sample must be?
Glad to hear it!
From the manual: "You can assign up to 48 MB worth of samples per kit", and each "Kit" (page) is comprised of 8 pads each. I've found my drum sounds are usually .5 MB or less, but I've also put in long-decay sounds and even hi-res loops of like 20 MB each.
I haven't been too scientific about it, but I also know size/duration also impacts the load time of the kit when you switch, so that may be a consideration of how you arrange your Kit layouts. I put in chime sounds for a Kit once (with like a 10-second decay) and it took quite a while to load when switching sets!
@@JayJohnJordan That's worthy info! Thanks a lot! 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Thanks
love your template thank you... , 🙏 you have saved me so much time. :-)
Can a song be sampled directly onto the pad by plugging an iPhone into the pad?
It has an 1/8" aux-in/thru, if that answers your question.
Really helpful video, Thanks for making this
11:06 God bless you bless you Sir 🙏
Glad you mentioned get it used... I was going to grab the 4, but found a used Pro for cheap... Has it held up well?
I've let some other team members use it, and since then I think there's been a little bit of re-triggering across two pads. I've just set the sensitivity down a little bit, and it works just fine.
I have questions about looping
Thank you for all the tips! I just ordered one. Won an auction on eBay for $207. Hopefully this is a good entry point for me into electronic drums. Ordering it mostly to use as a practice pad, but do expect to integrate it into my acoustic kit as well. What triggers did you end up buying?
Awesome! // My local music store had generic piezo triggers (for a snare and floor tom), and a bass drum "ddrum" trigger. I mainly just use snare+kick triggers for opening and closing effects, similar to hi-hat groupings.
great one man, thanx!
Thanks for the video. Great stuff
Hello , does this need a special power adapter or any 9v adapter would work .
I hesitate to reply, as electrical specs continue to perplex me, and I don't believe I have additional adapters to test with. But given the non-trivial pricepoint of this unit, I'd suggest probably purchasing a replacement adapter from Alesis.
Thanks very useful!!! Do you have your bassdrum&snare trigger connected to the pad exits? can you use the bassdrum trigger output to connect these external triggers?
That function *is* supported, and I've played with it! There are 16 "Mute Groups" that you can optionally assign to each sample (ex: open HH and closed HH both assigned to Mute Group 1). Any channel/sample can be assigned to a Mute Group, including the input for a kick trigger.
Great video for this Jay! Btw i have a question and maybe you could gladly help. As i am really frustrated how am I gonna make it work regarding the hi-hat.
Open hat was assigned into pad 8 for example,
i am using the avatar foot pedal,
plugged into hi-hat and selected “variable”
Assigned closed hat sound to the pedal once pressed
I wanted to assign a closed hat sound on pad 8 when the pedal is pressed, but it gives me the open hat sound. =(
I know for many foot switches/pedals, there is a polarity switch, which may be contributing to your opposite behavior. See if your pedal has a switch (like a small, hidden dip switch).
This rocks! Thank you!
Excellent, thanks.
I don't play with a click live (for certain reasons) but I'm not a drumcomputer xD. It's always possible that during a song I shift a few bpm. If I'd want to trigger a tambourine loop at the end of a song. But I'm not sure that I'm in the same tempo as the loop, would it be possible to use one of the pads as a tap in to set the loop bpm?
To my knowledge, none of the Alesis products could do that. They would just playback a loop at the tempo (and duration) it was recorded. I haven't dug into it, but if anything perhaps the full-price Roland SPD would have the computing power and features for something like tempo warping.
As another possible solution: perhaps you could set up another loop prior to your tambourine loop, with something subtle like hand claps or something. You could trigger that beforehand, and use it to tweak your tempo up or down prior to the full-on tambourine sample. It would take some rehearsing for knowing how to adjust to it, however. But any way you'd do it without a full-ensemble in-ear click, assuming you're the drummer, you'd need to be able to be in control to push/pull the tempo prior to the sample anyways.
@@JayJohnJordan thanks for your reply. I guess my best option wil be playing with a metronome again. The reason we stopped using one is because during a lot of songs (I'm the drummer) I dont play and the rest of the band don't have inears and they can't really keep the same tempo. But I'll try and find a solution to that
Hello,
I need information how to set hi-hat controller. Been not working when i tried to put the toogle to “varriable” or “switch”…
Thank you
I’d first try to rule out signal issues. Does your pedal work with the other SamplePad inputs? Does the pedal work with other equipment? Then finally, do other pedals (or sources of input) trigger the same SamplePad hi-hat input? If yes to any of these, perhaps something with the jacks may be incompatible for some reason?
@@JayJohnJordan i forgot to tell that i was trying with HH controller of yamaha DTX. But if i put the jack in to “foot switch” slot and i press the pedal, it actually works for stop any sound immediately after i hit another pad. So i think yamaha HH pedal can still works for Alesis SPD. But i havent found the problem yet.
Maybe you can give me a recommendation of HH pedal controller that can match with alesis SPD ^_^
Thank you
@@alfri_juntax8093 Oh! I think this is is probably expected behavior for the hi-hat input. Check out the manual and learn about "mute groups". In the context of hi-hats it should make sense, but you may need to adjust your other channels to get out of a mute group. Either that, or look at the Mode (POLY, STOP, HAT, etc.)
@@JayJohnJordan Okay. I will check it more. Thank you :)
what is compatible Bass kick trigger
I actually just use a sustain pedal for a MIDI keyboard, which works just fine for me. But because it's merely on-off, there's no velocity, but I'm sure you could shop around for other pedals with a 1/4" output.
Very useful thanks!
How do you fix the pads when they stop working, one by one? Apparently nobody knows how to fix anything on one of these units, so pay four times more for the Roland, because it will literally outlive four of these.🤷
You get what you pay for? 🤷♂ Good luck!
Hey . I bought one but I don’t know if should connect speaker to hear sounds or no coz I’m new in this. Could you please help me
You're not crazy: there's no speaker on this device, just the audio output from the main-out on the back. If you plug in a 1/4" cable to the L jack, it will work through a speaker or amp.
Hello, Jay.
Could you please guide how to create loops ??
I'm currently using the inbuilt drum kits of SAMPLEPAD PRO and trying to create a layered loop by setting the MODE of each pad of a kit to LOOP.
The problem is that every pad's loop has a different tempo. Please help me fix it.
Hi Dishant; that could be a big topic, depending on what you want to do. But basically, if you create something in your DAW of choice (at your BPM of choice), export it, and cut it off right at the end of a measure, it should make a loop. You can then put that into your SamplePad, and loop to your heart's content! As far as the content of a loop in a DAW, this looks like it might cover some things to think about (in FL Studio): ruclips.net/video/aUwSzbyNvLE/видео.html
@@JayJohnJordan Thank you!
Hey! I bought this product also, i want to know if i can do some beat making in ableton by using this?? So i can quit finger drumming..
Yup! You could use the USB jack on the SamplePad as a controller, to then trigger sounds through Ableton. You can map different sounds to different keys/inputs, check out this example: ruclips.net/video/zoAoddp0t6c/видео.html
thanks, this is very helpful
Great! I'd be curious to hear if you go with a SamplePad or some other unit, and how you use it. Let me know if so!
Thanks!
Can you guys teach us how to set up an HH trigger so that it links to a pad (ie Pad #7) so that it gives that pad the open/close effect? As of now, they act like 2 separate triggers and don't seem to be linked.
Hi, did you had any success linking a particular pad to your hihat?
I got mine and I’m using 10 minute loops I put them through the converter and it’s still saying it is to large. Would anybody know why? And if so how do I fix it?
Question on the top 2 pads (2 smaller top pads - the hi hat or cymbal sounds) those 2 pads. I have the same samplepad. How do you set those 2 pads that you don't have to hit them that hard. I found that i have to hit them pretty hard to make any sound. and then if they do.. it's full volume loud. (there's no soft tap or mid level trigger for the 2 smaller top pads)
Riiiiiight, I've been in the same boat for [ride] cymbal sounds. :( My guess is that the designers modeled these pads to be more like "rims" than "cymbals", as they seem to not be overly responsive. For those pads, I've just simply turned the Sens up, but turned the sample Lev very low. Or, look if I'm really motivated, I'll mount a single external pad (~$60 used) on a stand and use that for better responsive range.
@@JayJohnJordan i have 2 external pads, using snare and a extra sound pad. Also got the hi hat pedal and a bass pedal. But ill play with the sensitivity.
New to Electronics.....if i wanted to load 'samples' or 'loops' musical segments that were 16 beats or more, does the user choose the length of the sample or are there timing limitations per sample or per pad ? Thanks!
You just load a .wav file into the pad's slot, so it's not dictated by tempo, just file size. Referencing the user guide, it seems the only technical limitation is that you're limited to 48 MB total *per kit* (page) for all samples loaded. I've loaded loops up to 2 minutes long before no problem... HOWEVER the more/longer samples are loaded, the longer it will take to load before *any* samples are available for playback. So just make sure you switch over the page early enough before the next song in your set, and you'll be set.
@@JayJohnJordan Thanks Jay …appreciate the good info
Does it have congas and timbales sounds as well
Yes, it has the equivalent of two congas (and their slaps), and one timbale with a sound for regular, shot, and flam.
is it safe to update alexis sample pad pro with out a sd card
Thanks for this video Jay, I just got a samplepad pro last week and haven't had much time with it making samples yet. I Also purchased a laptop stand which is ideal for the machine, and not too expensive (here in Ireland I paid €35). The website address for USA recommends a $49 price but I'd say you'd probably get it a lot less expensive if you shopped around. It's really sturdy and solid for some serious drumming! Here's the web address www.adamhall.com/shop/aw-en/pro-audio/stands/laptop-stands/5532/slt-003 Thanks again and God Bless O:)
play the actual thing FFS
More out of COVID boredom and less of a true demo, I uploaded this awhile back:
ruclips.net/video/ewWy4papj2k/видео.htmlsi=ujlQtQ2ATa5nhMl1
Note these were custom drum sounds, and you can load whatever sounds you'd like on it via SD card. This was also specifically trying to use it like a drum set 😂