Alesis Performance Pad

Sticks, pads and a stored pattern

Eight velocity-sensitive pads put a drum pattern beneath the sticks. Play the internal sounds, record a phrase or connect MIDI Out to another sound source. The original Performance Pad combines a 233-sound library associated with the SR-16 with a pattern recorder, headphones and amplification connections. Kick and hi-hat footswitch inputs and a backing-track input make room for practice or performance beside an acoustic kit.

Sweetwater reported it at Summer NAMM on 27 July 2007. The later PerformancePad Pro is a separate model; the similarly named instruments do not share an interchangeable specification.

Sweetwater — Summer NAMM, 27 July 2007 ↗ Alesis — original Performance Pad ↗

From a performance to a pattern

The recorder captures timing and dynamics. Fifty preset and fifty user locations each contain A and B patterns with their own fills: the advertised 400 parts are those subdivisions, rather than 400 independent locations. A fill joins the running phrase and can lead into the alternate pattern. Up to 100 songs arrange these choices, entered as a list or captured during playback.

That structure gives a drummer two scales of work: a phrase beneath the sticks, then a sequence of phrases for a whole piece.

Reference manual Rev B — printed pages 1–2, 20 and 30–32 ↗

What the reviewer heard

MusicRadar's March 2008 review liked the build, the playable pads and straightforward operation, while reporting occasional unwanted triggering between pads. Its objection was largely musical: the internal sounds seemed old beside the possibilities of contemporary production. Headphone practice and an addition to an acoustic kit made more sense to the reviewer than a studio centrepiece. Switch-operated pedals, stereo rather than individual outputs, and absent MIDI In and USB limited its flexibility.

Sweetwater had presented familiar SR-16 sounds as a selling point; the reviewer heard their age. Those are two contemporary responses to the same proposition. Neither establishes that the circuitry was simply transplanted from an SR-16. The review lists £179 and $399, without establishing a common tax or launch-price basis.

MusicRadar — review, 13 March 2008 ↗

Another kit on the other end

For Daniel Gardner, working as Frivolous, the pads became a way into a software jazz kit. In his fabric equipment guide, he pairs the Performance Pad with EZ Drummer and identifies the combination with the jazz tracks on Meteorology. His enthusiasm is for adjustable drums, sticks, brushes, room microphones and the changing samples beneath different playing velocities. He stresses a low-latency soundcard when playing the pads.

That account gives the instrument a role the internal sound list cannot explain: a physical playing surface for another sound source. It does not establish that the Performance Pad's own samples are what we hear on those recordings.

fabric — Frivolous equipment guide, Performance Pad and EZ Drummer ↗

Among the instruments on the record

The credits for The Envelope Generator EP, dated 13 December 2011 on its Bandcamp page, name the Performance Pad alongside a TR-707, an MMT-8, synthesizers, sampler, guitar and piano. Hazel Cronin receives the principal performance and recording credits, with specified contributions by Sam Binstead. The equipment list places the pads in that wider setup without assigning their role to an individual track.

Envelope Generator — release credits and equipment ↗

MIDI goes out

MIDI Out lets the pads play another instrument. There is no MIDI In to receive notes or reload an exported backup: the manual describes its SysEx export as readable by an SR-16. Some incoming-MIDI wording elsewhere in the manuals conflicts with that outgoing-only design, which the contemporary review also reports.

Rev A describes two output pairs where Rev B does not. That change in the text does not establish another hardware edition. The original model’s stereo output and absent USB connection remain practical limits on how it joins a studio.

Rev B — printed pages 37–38, 41 and 44 ↗ Rev A — printed page 3 ↗ Alesis product archive ↗ MusicRadar — review, 13 March 2008 ↗