Roland Octapad is a range of

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

electronic drum Electronic drums is a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sound ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

controllers produced by the

Roland Corporation is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment, and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on 18 April 1972. In 2005, its headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. It has f ...

Roland Pad-8

The first model, introduced in 1985, was the Pad-8. Originally to be called MPC-8 (MIDI Percussion Controller 8), but was renamed Pad-8 to avoid legal implications with MPC Electronics. It was an influential device at that time, allowing drummers and percussionists the opportunity to trigger virtually any MIDI sound source without the need of a full electronic drum set.

Features

The Pad 8 Consists of eight individual pads (divided in two rows of four pads) and six external pad trigger ports. The controlled had no internal sound source and limited memory for four user patches. A unique initialization procedure, when powered on, would load a "patch preset" and configure the Pad-8 to work with either the Roland's TR-909 or TR-707/TR-727. The Pad 8 could only transmit on a single MIDI channel (channel 10 on power up), however each of the 14 pads is assigned a different MIDI-Note number. Both MIDI channel and note numbers could be edited to suite the device being controlled over MIDI. There is one parameter adjustable for each pad: MIDI Note. The remaining five parameters adjustable are global: MIDI Channel; Pad Sensitivity; Volume Curve; Minimum Velocity; and the Gate Time.

Notable Users/Endorsers

* Hard Corps *

Michael Shrieve Michael Shrieve (born July 6, 1949) is an American drummer, percussionist, and composer. He is best known as the drummer of the rock band Santana, playing on the band's first seven albums from 1969 to 1974. At age 20, Shrieve was the second you ...

/ David Beal * Stephen Morris (New Order) *

John Molo John Molo (born December 5, 1953, Bethesda, Maryland) is an American rock and jazz drummer and percussionist. He has played with a variety of bands, combos, and soloists. Best known for being the drummer for Bruce Hornsby and the Range, he has al ...

(Bruce Hornsby & The Range) * Norman Hassas (UB40) *

Eric Clapton Eric Patrick Clapton (born 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is often regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. Clapton ranked second in ''Rolling Stone''s list o ...

Phil Collins Philip David Charles Collins (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer, musician, songwriter, record producer and actor. He was the drummer and lead singer of the rock band Genesis and also has a career as a solo performer. Between 1982 and ...

(Genesis, Mike & Mechanics, Howard Jones, and Solo project) *

Danny Carey Daniel Edwin Carey (born May 10, 1961) is an American musician and songwriter. He is the drummer for the American rock band Tool. He has also contributed to albums by artists such as Zaum, Green Jellö, Pigface, Skinny Puppy, Adrian Belew, Ca ...

(Tool)

Roland Pad-80

The second model, introduced in 1989, was the Pad-80 Octapad II. Again the Pad-80 was an eight pad

controller that allowed for various types of MIDI sound sources.Page 8, Roland Pad-80 operation manual Improvements in this second model included the ability to play up to three notes per pad, and velocity switching, which allowed the user to stack or alternate between the assigned notes depending on how hard the pads were struck. This feature became useful for creating more realistic sounding drum parts, and in addition allowed drummers to play melodic instruments with greater ease. These new features were groundbreaking at the time, and are still utilized in Roland's electronic percussion today. The memory was increased, allowing up to 64 different patches internally and another 64 patches to be stored on a Roland M-256E memory card. Further improvements to the

specification included the control of modulation, pitch bend and aftertouch using a foot pedal, along with full System Exclusive (SysEx) capability. The Pad-80 had a patch chain function that allowed a series of 32 patches to be arranged in any sequence, eight of these chains could be stored in memory.

Roland SPD-8 (1990), SPD-11 (1993), and SPD-20 (1998)

After the Pad-80, Roland continued to release SPD-8 with on-board sounds, as a standalone instrument in 1990, SPD-11 in 1993, which not only had more sounds but also built-in effects processing, and SPD-20 in 1998, which had more on-board sounds. These SPD Series products apart from the SPD-20 and 20x had not been named "Octapad" on the product panel.

Octapad SPD-30 (2010)

Roland continued the line in 2010 with th
Octapad SPD-30
which includes on-board sounds and effects. Version 2 was released as a firmware update in 2012.

Octapad SPD-20x (2015) and SPD-20 Pro (2020)

Roland released the SPD-20x in 2015 and the SPD-20 Pro in 2020 with more on-board sounds and an additional external trigger socket.

References

{{Roland Electronic musical instruments