I had been eyeing these things for awhile and finally decided to give myself an early Christmas present and get one. It was designed to be a sort of electronic conga drum and it has some very good conga sounds built-in (as well as several hundred other world and electronic sounds). The interface is split into 10 rubber pad areas and each one makes a different sound. Some of the pads can influence other pads to emulate things like holding one hand down on a drum while you hit it with the other. You get a different more muted sound. That works pretty well and if I was a better drummer I think it might sound pretty realistic.
It has inputs for a couple of external pedals so it can be closer to a full drum kit with the addition of kick and hihat pedals (but way more portable), and it has the nifty ‘D-Beam’ infrared controller for triggering sounds (like a big gong, blammo!) or affecting other sounds like fiddling with the pitch for some cool effects. It also has a somewhat interesting ‘Rhythm Coach’ that I’m hoping may help me actually be able to play some of these ethnic beats.
I played with it some today and it’s pretty fun so far. I’ll be using it live for the first time tomorrow (at the Be Nice Party one year anniversary) so hopefully I don’t embarrass myself too much. I was hoping to have more than a day to get to know it. Wish me luck!
5 replies on “Roland Handsonic electronic hand drum”
“Up (nwtgb)”…
Some time back, I mentioned that I was starting to get into producing my own music using Apple’s Logic Pro. I’ve been working off and on learning the ins and outs of the software (and there are a lot of ins and outs, trust me) and music production in…
Curious if you’re still happy with this? I played with one briefly years ago, and generally liked it, though at times it seemed a bit sluggish. As a drummer I’m definitely ‘amatuer’, and my doumbek and djembe drumming sounds a lot better than when i try to work a snare and hihat and bass drum pedals.
We recently got our daughter a toy drum (http://redirx.com/?7knt) that i’ve become a bit addicted to, which made me think of this Roland thing again…
Yeah, I’m still happy with it. I use it to just goof off (some people call it practicing) with the built-in sounds and as a midi controller for Battery (via Logic and Live). It’s a great hands-on controller for beats, though it is is a bit pricey for just that use. The built-in sounds are pretty good but not realy stuff I’d personally use much. They’re almost all natural sounding drums and I prefer more electronic sounds for my own music. There isn’t really anything else quite like this out there…
Oh, the rhythm coach function it has built-in is pretty neat. It gets very hard very fast. I am able to keep up with ok for a little bit and then it just quickly becomes hopeless. It’s fun, though.
Cool, thanks for the update! I’m mainly interested in it as a midi controller (i always find ‘playing’ music more fun than moving dots around on a drum pattern or piano scroll, at least for the first pass before I go and clean things up ;). I looked up the price, and it’s more expensive than I’d expected, but as you said there aren’t many/any alternatives if you want to play with your hands and not fingers or sticks.
I am Interested in the Roland Handsonic Electronic Hand Drum
1.What are the dimensions in cm or inches?
2. Areyou aware of a second hand market for this product?
If so could you let me know the website addresses?
3. Are ther any equivalent products out on the market by
different manufacturers?