By David Gedge
HIT ME WITH YOUR RHYTHM STICK
Roland SPD One
My Pad or Yours?
Roland SPD ONE
Roland has announced the SPD One
series, a new line of compact electronic
percussion pads that can be played with
drumsticks, hands, or feet. Offering fea-
62 illinoisentertainer.com june 2017
tures like built-in sounds, user sample
import, intuitive operation, and more, the
SPD One series enables any musician to
enhance their performances and expand
their creativity with Roland’s leading digi-
tal percussion technology.
Roland’s top-selling electronic drum sounds, from shaker and tambourine to
and percussion instruments have reinvent- gong and timpani. The SPD One Kick
ed electric drums for players everywhere, offers sounds optimized for triggering by
and products such as V-Drums, the SPD- foot, including bass drums, stomp boxes,
SX Sampling Pad, and the Octapad SPD-30 percussion, and more. Each of these mod-
are regularly used on concert stages by els comes with built-in effects, and offers
musicians all over the world. With a eye on the ability to import user WAV samples up
reinventing the electronic pad and drum to five seconds long via USB.
Instead of onboard sounds, the SPD
market, the SPD One makes Roland per-
cussion even more accessible to all types of One WAV Pad comes equipped with 4 GB
music makers, from drummers and per- of flash memory, enabling users to load
their own custom WAV files
cussion players to
via USB. With 12 memory
guitarists, vocalists,
locations and up to 360 min-
DJs, and more.
utes of stereo audio time avail-
The four models in
able, the WAV Pad can be
the SPD One series
loaded with everything from
run on batteries or AC
short one-shot samples and
power and offer fea-
looped phrases to full-length
ture sets tailored for
backing tracks. A unique and
different
musical
useful feature is the ability for
needs. Common fea-
users to load click tracks to
tures include a versa-
accompany their backing
tile, highly responsive
pad surface that can LP Aspire Santana Lion Percussion tracks, and to output them to
the headphones output only
be played like a drum,
hand percussion instrument, or foot-trig- for monitoring purposes.
Each model can be used on a desk,
gered stomp box. A simple knob-based
interface provides quick access to sound table or floor, or clamped to a drum or mic
selection, volume level, and other parame- stand using the included mounting hard-
ters, while side-mounted controls offer ware. USB-MIDI is also supported, allow-
easy adjustment of the playing response. ing musicians to use an SPD One pad to
Each model also includes separate main input MIDI data and trigger sounds in
music software. To learn more about the
and headphone outputs.
The SPD One Electro is equipped with SPD One series, visit www.Roland.com.
a variety of electronic percussion sounds, MSRP Starts at $199.00
including snare and handclaps from
Roland’s legendary TR drum machines.
Percussive Greatness
The SPD One Percussion comes with a LP Aspire Santana Lion Percussion
wide selection of acoustic percussion
In celebration of their nearly 50-year