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In 1996 the drummer for the band I played with broke his freakin' neck and couldn't play with us for 8 months. We replaced him with the SR-16 for live shows and it worked perfectly. He programmed every song for us and we never missed a show. We never missed a beat either.
I jamed with a drummer with a broken neck, he still played with all bolts and braces, scaffolding attached to him, had to love his spirit though. He broke it stage diving at a Kreator gig in Sydney Australia, 1993🙂🤟
lol he comes back "hey guys, I'm ready to play again!" **awkward silence** "yeah.... about that... We sorta decided to keep the Alesis in the band...." Just totally Ringo Strarr him.
In the 90s I used to write entire tracks on this thing trying to emulate a real drummer. It was a huge pain in the ass, and took hours and hours and ended up sounding like a real drummer who was in an accident and had their brain replaced with a 1990s drum machine. I'm still buying a used one after seeing this.
@@the80386 there is no such thing as bad gear in terms of sound it's just poorly designed or explained by the creators. Sane thing goes for most software, except if it's free and it bugs you every five minutes to pay for it
Former alesis Tech support here. If you have to slam your pads you have a common problem where all the pads transmit midi at about minus 25 of what they should. You can tell if you have presets left because those are recorded at the proper velocity and will sound louder than you can hit the pads
@@adamdamico9269 I don't know if there is a fix. I always just triggered it with an external controller through midi which is a workaround rather than fix. Even with bad pads it will still record velocity from external Midi sources.
@@AudioPilz take it apart. clean both the back of the pad and the contacts. Then there is a trick of using graphite pencil lead on the contact surfaces. I've been advised to do this on my alesis mmt8. perhaps this would be of some help to you.
@@cdwhiley I learned the "clean it and dope the contacts with graphite" trick getting old TV remote controls working after the channel-up and channel-down buttons wore out.
I literally just bought one after spending hours researching the best option for a drum machine/module with multiple outputs, this was the most affordable option by a ridiculous margin
I gigged one of these for many years in a duo act and for me, the hardest thing was finding realistic, cross-genre snare samples and also the amount of time it took to prog songs using on-board functionality. In the days before these things were loaded with memory card slots, I went out and bought a second one to cope with the set. I owe those little machines big time - we were working 6 nights a week with them. God bless the SR16.
I'm a classical guitarist by trade but I like to make synthwave beats as a fun hobby. This drum machine sat in the shop I teach out of for years and years. One day I asked the manager what it was. He said, "Why, do you want a drum machine? I can cut you a deal." I said I wanted to hear it first. My initial impression was good God, this thing is some serious trash, but when I got to the kits that weren't trying too hard to sound like actual drums I was instantly intrigued. "How much?" "$50. Please get it the fuck out of the store, it's just going to sit here." I sat and watched the same VHS tutorial ripped to UA-cam. Good God what a snoozer. Once I got into MIDI functionality the thing instantly made more sense. I'm working on a beat with this thing, some synths, all controlled by a Yamaha QY10, and recorded into a four track cassette. Yes, I know, I'm just that kind of asshole. I have fun, though, and that's what matters, because this kind of musical dumbfuckery is never going to pay the bills for me anyway. My concert guitar was handmade in Spain. My electronic gear? For the most part I own hobbyist gear for hobbyist clownery. I spent about the same for a Pocket Operator Rhythm and got a lot more with the Alesis SR-16 (again, all of this is hobbyist gear for hobbyist clownery), so is this drum machine really that bad?
Yes, I think it is that bad. I don't like drum machines that sound anything like real drums. Just like I don't like Siri, Alexa et al aping a human voice. I don't want AI assistants to sound any more human than Stephen Hawking.
I wouldn't say it's a bad drum machine outright, just more trouble than it's worth without external control equipment. Its samples are pretty good, though, if a bit hard to fit into most electronic genres.
I've been looking at the SR16 for a while and this video clinched it. I got it about a week ago and I love it. The sequencer is actually very compatible with my brain and I'm discovering a new way of making music. The workflow is admittedly slow but it's intuitive and I'm not spending much time being frustrated that it's not working at all.
Somehow, these "Bad Gear" vids just convince me to buy a piece of gear even more. Got a DX7 after watching your video (was planning on getting one anyway) and now I want this since it's cheap and sounds pretty 80s
There are probably about a billion of em out there by now. They've been selling it for nearly 30 years. It's the McDonalds Hamburger of drum machines: Billions and Billions Sold 😂 Mine lives on my desk.
The SR16 is a perfectly decent drum machine if you like the sound of real drums. If you prefer electronic farts and burps then of course you won't like it.
If you want a little more creative freedom and fun, I recently synced up my SR16 with a Drumbrute Impact. They work and sound great together. I didn’t think it was possible because the SR16 doesn’t work well with some newer gear (from my experience). But now it sounds like a have cool percussion section as opposed to just a drummer.
The sequencer has one unique feature: dynamic fill-ins. At the time the machine first hit the market no one had that, and even today it is still a rare feature. This is great for jamming, and it has a footswitch, another missing feature on todays drum machines :) BTW: The "successor", the SR-18, also available as Akai XR-20, is much worse and could be a good candidate for your series, since its bass part is not permanently mutable, the fills are not dynamic and the sounds are more "meh" than "yeah".
I bought mine in the 1990s and used it for a one-man-band project. I used foot switches for start/stop and fill-ins, worked perfectly for that purpose. These days I mainly use it as a deluxe metronome for multitracker recordings. But it still works, it's even got its first battery inside. The Alesis service told me that as long as there's no data loss there's no need to replace it... Well, they answered my e-mail very fast, so that's more than you can expect from other companies...
I used to double the bass and snare drum sounds using Perc 1 & 2. The internal sounds of the SR16 stack wonderfully. Also, a little bit of processing goes a long way in sparking up this machine. Plus, the internal sequencer really is no rocket science, and it saves the exact moments when you press "fill" making for decent dynamics in terms of fill starts and so. I sometimes still use the sequencer to trigger (arguably much more versatile) samples in my DAW in my current recordings. Really a cool machine. But for those working exclusively in DAWs of course it's quite obsolete.
I have the drum-set version of this, sold under the name Ion ID02, as the center of the Ion IED01 electronic drum set. It is identical to the SR 16 in all ways, except it has 11 trigger inputs for piezo drum pads in the back. At 1:37 you note you have to get physical with the pads. Two things: you can modify the velocity in Record Setup to accommodate for soft or hard playing, and set non-velolcity volume. If you have the ID02 version, you can also trigger all the samples using piezos plugged to the inputs on the back. FYI, I'm a metal guitarist, and I love Godflesh and your video!
Thanks for the on point analysis... this was my first purchase of a drum machine long ago. I liked that it was easy to use as a regular musician, I'm not patient enough for deep levels of programming. That being said- never mind the limited range of drum sounds- the sr16 can be pushed into exciting levels of expression especially if you take it off of quantize and exploit the considerable unorthodox possibilities. It's very good for odd time signatures, and the dynamic quality of the pads is worth the frustration of getting to know the limits. Ikue Mori no less used this model to do some great work for many years. A best seller for a reason...
I've bought a used SR-16 last week, I think it's the first version. And one of the purposes I was going to use it, was kind of an advanced metronome. But I was pretty surprised and kind of disappointed to find out that the internal clock of my SR-16 isn't very accurate. The BPM is a little faster than it's indicated on the screen, and the beat doesn't seem very stable. Maybe it's only my particular SR-16. But on the other hand it gives that "live" feeling. When syncing from another device with midi cable, everything's fine.
Being a bedroom metal guitarist myself, it was my need for drums and other bandmates that got me into drum machines and synths initially. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a good portion of your viewers that are into Metal. You've worn an Opeth shirt before... waiting for a Prog Metal album from you! \m/
I used to work with a bass player who used the SR-16 for backing him and myself on guitar. It was an alright drum machine for it's day, I never would have imagined that people would use it for Metal...Lol The SR-16 was a good solid drum machine (for it's time) maybe it would be fun to use it now to see what it would sound like. I love this channel, great stuff!
Man this brought back memories. We had one of these in my Electronic Music Synth classes (y2k in high school) with Master Tracks Pro 5 at the helm. Yes that built-in sequencer is not even worth looking at. The built-in pads really make this more approachable than many devices at the time costing more money and without obvious and dare I say "labeled" pads. Too bad Tom Petty couldn't have used this on Running Down a Drain -- he used some less-worthy machine for that high hat click track in 1989... Great video as always.
It definitely takes some work but this thing can get stupid heavy with the right compression and reverb!! A lot of really good snares and kicks if you're into late 80s/90s anime OSTs and jpop or citypop stuff. Unrelated, but I'm pretty sure it's used on the original vocal songs for the 4kids localization of Pokemon. Listen to the snare on that opening song and you'll never unhear it :P I honestly really wish more drum machines had "fill" patterns the way this one does, really useful feature the few times I've ever used it for DAWless stuff
I used the SR-16 exclusively as a click track when recording to 2" tape. for over a decade, back in the 2000's. Never actually tried to use it as a drum machine. I kinda like the sounds you got out of it though.
streetcleaner by godflesh uses the sr-16 and it sounds great in their noisy industrial metal. I used it for a deathgrind project recently! i love this dumb machine
the sequencer is actually kind of amazing- different quantize levels at each layer- works best with an external drum pad. also the 4 outputs mean it plays well with all the old guitar pedals in your closet- it can also be bent pretty easily which makes it great for far out downsampling. pretty bad as a primary drum machine, but great as an addition to a live rig. also the midi out means it can trigger external drum modules.
@@VuotoPneumaNN I think they switched later? The SR-16 has no layering, which in the HR-16 was the basis of the early Godflesh sound. But I _think_ I remember Justin mentioning this one in an interview as well?
@@VuotoPneumaNN "The HR16 blew up on our first tour of the US, and was replaced with the newer SR16." instagram.com/p/CBGOaS9pEMz/ Not sure if it was used otherwise, but still.
I believe it was actually the Alesis D4 that many metal bands used. It's the same sounds, but had trigger inputs. A lot of them would play the live drums and layer the kicks and snares etc with the Alesis sounds.
I used one of these back in about 1990 when I was in a goth band with my sis & her boyfriend. We started out with the drum machine, me on bass, Nick on lead guitar, my sis "singing" - 1 problem: she was utterly tone deaf. Oh well. Eventually we got a guy called Chris to do live drums alongside the SR-16. We found the SR-16 fairly easy to use, tbh. I read up on drum machine programming & Nick & I came up with some pretty good grooves. I liked that you could get a whole song programmed in, with different stuff going on in the intro, verses, chorus, hook & end. I mean, it was the first hardware drum machine I've used & compared to the 4 track portastudio we used to create tapes it was really simple.
I bought one used 8 years ago ( I may or may not have been high) and finally ordered a replacement power chord yesterday. Im filled with anticipation. Especially now.
In the early 90's this was my go to for drum programming. The sounds were highly tweakable if you had the patience to figure it out. For the price it was at that point in time, it was fantastic. I used it mostly for Smooth Jazz/New Age gigs and for house music that sounded different than the standard 909. I use virtual drum machines now -- but I picked up one of these used in working condition for $40 last year for nostalgia's sake.
@@SteveAstronaut Late 80's, early 90's, Southern California. Most "New Age" music was New Age in name only, like on the Narada and Windham Hill record labels. Hotels, quiet bars and restaurants would hire New Age artists for ambience. Most gigs were just show up, play instrumentals quietly, go home. Couple years later, same gigs were called Smooth Jazz. Then we could cover Enya AND Kenny G! Yay!
I'm a metalhead learning new skills during pandemic lockdown, like playing keyboards and how to program sequencers. I tend to like synthwave as well. So... good job on totally faking the metalcore.
Still have mine which I've owned since new. I have used the tape input to load new patterns that came on a cassette tape (same way you would load up sounds into a Korg Poly 800) I got the tape back in the 90's from a company called The Groove Factory. There are full patterns for a lot of well known songs on there :)
Bought one in 91 loved it! kept it for years until a colleague “borrowed” it in early 2000. Bought a new one in 06 and still use it today with my synth stuff
First they’ll talk about it. Then make comparisons...”you should’ve gone with something else”.... “Hey can I barrow your SR-16???” Never brings it back
I love mine. It will never leave my studio. All instruments have their place and time to be used. You never know years after this machine may be as sought after as a real TR909, 808.i know they are cheap, but they have their place in music production.
Great drum machine but there are so many of them on the used market and still available new, so I don't think they will become as sought-after as the 808 or 909
The Alesis official 'How to use our SR-16 videos 1 and 2' found here on UA-cam are actually very informative and clear (seems slightly dated but stick with it). A relatively quick way to get well aquainted with a complex and still capable machine. Also lots of in-depth hints like doubling certain drums and claps at different velocities to make a more realistic effect.
I've got one I've had for years. I used to use it to make rave music back in the day. It's largely all I could afford then, although I did blend it with a Boss DR550. It was OK ish. Always found the drums really flat and needed some treatment to get the best out of it. Is it dated? Most definitely. While I still have it, I haven't considered using it on anything for years.
@@AudioPilz Oh I do too for those specific things. If you're doing those sort of tunes (as I said, I used it a lot for rave music back in the day) it does quite well indeed. These days, I just find it quite dated for anything else. I predominantly use an Elektron Model Samples partly just for ease of use (as it's a gem to play on the fly) and because it has the fluidity of being sample based. Even dated stuff still has it's place.
These machines circuit bend very well (the older non surface-mount ones), you can end up with something like a 32 pin patchbay that mangles the digital samples (with some crashes here and there). Breaking out the pins of one of the 2 large 32 pin chips (bottom right of the main board) to external headers is how this is acheived. Or find a few nice points on the chips and put them to switches.
This is the best channel of 2020, honestly. 😄 I associate the Alesis SR-16 with all the pop/R&B/post-new jack swing because it just sounds like it. Never knew it could be an actual replacement for a metal drummer, lol.
I still have this box. I remember it was a high school graduation gift. Used to drive it through a Crate amp and distort those kicks. Think I was just trying to be Trent Reznor.
Happy to hear that. There are certainly more sophisticated methods of doing that - it was more of a "proof of concept". Will try to fit in a little tutorial...
I don't see what is so dated about this drum machine..if you look at any drum kit the Snare, Toms, Bass drum etc. all basically sound the same. What makes the difference is what you do with the drums in the mixer. Well this drum machine contains excellent samples of wet as well as dry drum kits, so it's up to you what your final sounds winds up being/sounding like, just like a regular drum kit. And if you record your drums separately/live not sequenced snare hat toms bass drum, unless you tell whomever listens to your track/music they will never know..that's how good this machine is.
Just ran across your video after pulling my SR-16 out. I bought it new in 1995 and basically never used it because I could never get the hang of programming it and I think I had the low volume pad issue out of the box. But I discovered last night that using one of the midi lanes on my Circuit Tracks is a fantastic way to program this unit. Just write a 2 bar pattern on Tracks. Switch the SR-16 to compose mode and hit play on the Tracks. Boom it's programmed. You can over dub so you can program one instrument at a time, or do all at once, just make sure to switch back to perform mode before you start auditioning new parts to the pattern. It makes the SR-16 infinitely more useable. I am sure other sequencers will do the same, but I found the Tracks a perfect companion and I'm excited to finally use my 27 year old gear.
I had (have) one of these. I loved it, until I went through a 'circuit-bending' phase in the early 2000s, when I took it apart without documenting how I did it. Now, its innards reside in a plastic bag, with those of an ER-1, which suffered the same fate. Love your demos of the unit.
@@megatron804 "Makes one wonder" of course being one of those phrases that make it abundantly easy to identify an illiterate douche, who hasn't quite mastered the fine art of trolling, but is shitfaced enough to give it a shot. Well done, honey.
I have had this machine since 1990, used it for live and recordings "loads of them", I can't lie, it worked for nearly any production, I still have it in my studio though not used very much now.
All gear may be useful if you use it with a critical approach. The SR16 has all you need. I've owned one since 2000 and I don't see any reason to have anything else. Just modulate it if the sounds seem to need an update or a tweak. There are plenty of sounds in that machine to build upon. The price is right and we can all benefit from a more relaxed approach to "the right gear." Use your brain and figure out how to make shit work.
I bought one of these in the mid 90's, second hand. I used it for a couple of years, and then sold it. Wouldn't be surprised if it was still in use somewhere today.
I just got one of these and omg it is absolutely the most sexy drum machine ever, hands down. 4 outputs, individual assignment of each separate sound, 24 separate triggerable samples when paired with the keystep pro's drum track... this thing is amazing. Lmao at the tape backup system, what trip that it actually has something that archaic. The only (bad?) thing I have noticed about it so far is that the tail of the crash samples seem a bit short. Loving it though, the separate outputs work great for a classic jamaican dub sound where only the snare is sent to the delay. Looking forward to making a lot more with it.
Full Tracks, Extended Jams, Sample Packs:
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In 1996 the drummer for the band I played with broke his freakin' neck and couldn't play with us for 8 months. We replaced him with the SR-16 for live shows and it worked perfectly. He programmed every song for us and we never missed a show. We never missed a beat either.
More beer left in the backstage fridge, too!
Reminds me of Кино using a Yamaha drum machine instead of having an actual drummer in the band.
@@Kolavskaya He turned out to be a better manager than drummer!
I jamed with a drummer with a broken neck, he still played with all bolts and braces, scaffolding attached to him, had to love his spirit though.
He broke it stage diving at a Kreator gig in Sydney Australia, 1993🙂🤟
lol he comes back "hey guys, I'm ready to play again!"
**awkward silence**
"yeah.... about that... We sorta decided to keep the Alesis in the band...."
Just totally Ringo Strarr him.
In the 90s I used to write entire tracks on this thing trying to emulate a real drummer. It was a huge pain in the ass, and took hours and hours and ended up sounding like a real drummer who was in an accident and had their brain replaced with a 1990s drum machine.
I'm still buying a used one after seeing this.
I'll take this as a compliment. I produced so many lobotomized drum tracks ;)
@@AudioPilz sounds perfect for industrial music
Dead. Best comment ever
i'm selling one in western Canada if you're still looking, i'll ship anywhere in north america
@@AudioPilz I am SO looking forward to this! (*bangs head repeatedly against a really pretty nice Nektar keyboard to get in the right headspace *)
I’m a metal guy who’s been a “closet electronic” guy for a while, coming out. Totally shocked by the metal sequence.
I'll take this as a compliment ;)
Sounds better than anything Attack Attack or Asking Alexandria or those guys ever put out 👌
You’re kind is popular in America
A metal guy that's a "closet electronic" guy sound like half of Norwegian Black Metal scene i the 90s.
Agoraphobic Nosebleed and Mortician used the SR16
This series should be named "Bad Gear that my kookie tunes will make you actually want to buy".
That metal was awesome btw 😂
Oh, Mr. Ball. Always nice to have you around. THX!!!
It should be renamed [ High Precision Exposé of Untalented Whiners and Blame-Shifters in the Audio Production Arena ]
@@the80386 there is no such thing as bad gear in terms of sound it's just poorly designed or explained by the creators. Sane thing goes for most software, except if it's free and it bugs you every five minutes to pay for it
Former alesis Tech support here. If you have to slam your pads you have a common problem where all the pads transmit midi at about minus 25 of what they should. You can tell if you have presets left because those are recorded at the proper velocity and will sound louder than you can hit the pads
Great to have an expert around! Do you have a link to a more in depth problem description?
I just picked one up today for $15 and I think it has this issue. Can I fix it by opening it up and cleaning the pad contacts? What's the fix?
@@adamdamico9269 I don't know if there is a fix. I always just triggered it with an external controller through midi which is a workaround rather than fix. Even with bad pads it will still record velocity from external Midi
sources.
@@AudioPilz take it apart. clean both the back of the pad and the contacts. Then there is a trick of using graphite pencil lead on the contact surfaces. I've been advised to do this on my alesis mmt8. perhaps this would be of some help to you.
@@cdwhiley I learned the "clean it and dope the contacts with graphite" trick getting old TV remote controls working after the channel-up and channel-down buttons wore out.
Ok, as a New Wave guy and a huge fan of the Synthpop and Synthwave, I am not afraid to say... I like it
Great for that genres!
I'm like you ! And it's also great for dark shoegaze, it's been used a lot by the great Lycia on their records.
Look up the cover that one guy did of Into the Groove with it. Convinced me to buy it right away.
The metal drumming was unironically rad.
The SR-16 REALLY surprised me in that application. Thought it would be cheesy - but it packs quite some punch
@Luke After a while the repeating crash sound, which got no round robin, tell you it's not real, but in the first seconds i can't tell either :D
The fact that it still sells after all this time, speaks for itself.
Absolutely! That thing got some staying power
I literally just bought one after spending hours researching the best option for a drum machine/module with multiple outputs, this was the most affordable option by a ridiculous margin
Just bought one for 50 quid..2nd hand...not bad as I don't have a laptop
SR-16 has to hold the record for the longest production of an electronic instrument, and it’s still going. I would call that legendary, not bad.
I think I need one, especially after watching this video.
I gigged one of these for many years in a duo act and for me, the hardest thing was finding realistic, cross-genre snare samples and also the amount of time it took to prog songs using on-board functionality. In the days before these things were loaded with memory card slots, I went out and bought a second one to cope with the set.
I owe those little machines big time - we were working 6 nights a week with them.
God bless the SR16.
Great workhorse drum machine
It may be old, but for 60 bucks, I'd be on it like fat on a mother-in-law.
It's a no brainer
grotesque and unnecessary, but i guess i agree?
I would never use a line like that. I've always gotten on better with my mother in law than with my mom. :P
@@mrz80 You are very fortunate in that respect... And the line is courtesy of Steve Martin.
@@Marc9889 Ah, ok, if it comes from one of the premier bluegrass banjo players of our generation I'm ok with it :D :D
As someone starting a solo blackened grind project, I am very excited.
Nice!
I'm a classical guitarist by trade but I like to make synthwave beats as a fun hobby. This drum machine sat in the shop I teach out of for years and years. One day I asked the manager what it was. He said, "Why, do you want a drum machine? I can cut you a deal." I said I wanted to hear it first. My initial impression was good God, this thing is some serious trash, but when I got to the kits that weren't trying too hard to sound like actual drums I was instantly intrigued. "How much?" "$50. Please get it the fuck out of the store, it's just going to sit here." I sat and watched the same VHS tutorial ripped to UA-cam. Good God what a snoozer. Once I got into MIDI functionality the thing instantly made more sense. I'm working on a beat with this thing, some synths, all controlled by a Yamaha QY10, and recorded into a four track cassette. Yes, I know, I'm just that kind of asshole. I have fun, though, and that's what matters, because this kind of musical dumbfuckery is never going to pay the bills for me anyway. My concert guitar was handmade in Spain. My electronic gear? For the most part I own hobbyist gear for hobbyist clownery. I spent about the same for a Pocket Operator Rhythm and got a lot more with the Alesis SR-16 (again, all of this is hobbyist gear for hobbyist clownery), so is this drum machine really that bad?
No, it's just not very s€xy ;)
Yes, I think it is that bad. I don't like drum machines that sound anything like real drums. Just like I don't like Siri, Alexa et al aping a human voice. I don't want AI assistants to sound any more human than Stephen Hawking.
I wouldn't say it's a bad drum machine outright, just more trouble than it's worth without external control equipment. Its samples are pretty good, though, if a bit hard to fit into most electronic genres.
@@AudioPilz Now that's a piece of bad gear you must review: The Yamaha QY10! Complete with VHS-tape-shaped storage box...
I've been looking at the SR16 for a while and this video clinched it. I got it about a week ago and I love it. The sequencer is actually very compatible with my brain and I'm discovering a new way of making music. The workflow is admittedly slow but it's intuitive and I'm not spending much time being frustrated that it's not working at all.
Congrats!
A friend used this machine on his metal album that I mixed. I was very impressed by both the sound and his programming
Yeah, it fits the mix so nicely!
Somehow, these "Bad Gear" vids just convince me to buy a piece of gear even more. Got a DX7 after watching your video (was planning on getting one anyway) and now I want this since it's cheap and sounds pretty 80s
Cool! There should be a DX7 in every household;) SR-16 replaced my drum plugs!
Can't swing the dead presidents for a DX7? Download DEXED. It's a freebie 6-op FM synth that, if memory serves, will digest DX7 sysex dumps.
This is one of the best channels on synth stuff. Honestly you are hilarious and have such a good / funny take on all these pieces of gear
Thanks!
I picked one of these up at a goodwill for 20 bucks. Pairs nicely with all my other hand-me-down 90s gear!
Total music production workhorse!
SCORE!
For a drum machine that's 30+ years old and around, $100 used it still holds up.
Gonna get my hands on one ASAP before it becomes the next 808.
Too many on the market for it to become an 808. Great drum machine nonetheless
There are probably about a billion of em out there by now. They've been selling it for nearly 30 years. It's the McDonalds Hamburger of drum machines: Billions and Billions Sold 😂 Mine lives on my desk.
I think the samples are actually pretty cool especially for house and post punk
It's the ultimate Metal drum machine
The SR16 is a perfectly decent drum machine if you like the sound of real drums. If you prefer electronic farts and burps then of course you won't like it.
You can get quite some burps and farts out of it
I agree with you. I've had one since 2004 and it will never leave my studio.
@@thetruemrstallings mine too
I just want a kick that sounds like a *kick*, not a bowl of oatmeal set on a 2x6 and struck with a rubber mallet!
This was also the drum machine used for the loop in 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins
I only found out after completing the episode😢
If you want a little more creative freedom and fun, I recently synced up my SR16 with a Drumbrute Impact. They work and sound great together. I didn’t think it was possible because the SR16 doesn’t work well with some newer gear (from my experience). But now it sounds like a have cool percussion section as opposed to just a drummer.
Wonderful, I hope you will never run out of bad gears!
Thanks. Unfortunately, it is a constant struggle. Especially during lockdown...
The sequencer has one unique feature: dynamic fill-ins. At the time the machine first hit the market no one had that, and even today it is still a rare feature. This is great for jamming, and it has a footswitch, another missing feature on todays drum machines :)
BTW: The "successor", the SR-18, also available as Akai XR-20, is much worse and could be a good candidate for your series, since its bass part is not permanently mutable, the fills are not dynamic and the sounds are more "meh" than "yeah".
Great input, thanks!
I have fallen in love with your bad gear series. Your videos have so much character and are so enjoyable to watch. Thanks for all you do.
Thanks!
I'm really enjoying your content! I really enjoy how you sort of redeem the "bad gear".
Thanks!
I bought mine in the 1990s and used it for a one-man-band project. I used foot switches for start/stop and fill-ins, worked perfectly for that purpose. These days I mainly use it as a deluxe metronome for multitracker recordings. But it still works, it's even got its first battery inside. The Alesis service told me that as long as there's no data loss there's no need to replace it... Well, they answered my e-mail very fast, so that's more than you can expect from other companies...
I used to double the bass and snare drum sounds using Perc 1 & 2. The internal sounds of the SR16 stack wonderfully. Also, a little bit of processing goes a long way in sparking up this machine. Plus, the internal sequencer really is no rocket science, and it saves the exact moments when you press "fill" making for decent dynamics in terms of fill starts and so. I sometimes still use the sequencer to trigger (arguably much more versatile) samples in my DAW in my current recordings. Really a cool machine. But for those working exclusively in DAWs of course it's quite obsolete.
I use it with a DAW a lot. The samples just always "work"
I have the drum-set version of this, sold under the name Ion ID02, as the center of the Ion IED01 electronic drum set. It is identical to the SR 16 in all ways, except it has 11 trigger inputs for piezo drum pads in the back. At 1:37 you note you have to get physical with the pads. Two things: you can modify the velocity in Record Setup to accommodate for soft or hard playing, and set non-velolcity volume. If you have the ID02 version, you can also trigger all the samples using piezos plugged to the inputs on the back. FYI, I'm a metal guitarist, and I love Godflesh and your video!
Nice!!! Thanks!!!
Thanks for the on point analysis... this was my first purchase of a drum machine long ago. I liked that it was easy to use as a regular musician, I'm not patient enough for deep levels of programming. That being said- never mind the limited range of drum sounds- the sr16 can be pushed into exciting levels of expression especially if you take it off of quantize and exploit the considerable unorthodox possibilities. It's very good for odd time signatures, and the dynamic quality of the pads is worth the frustration of getting to know the limits. Ikue Mori no less used this model to do some great work for many years. A best seller for a reason...
Thanks! Absolutely, it replaced most of my drum plugins
Just started researching one of these. Immediately searched YT for bad gear sr-16. Wasn't disappointed.
As a glorified metronome, this bass player really liked it.
It IS pretty s€xy for a metronome;)
I've bought a used SR-16 last week, I think it's the first version. And one of the purposes I was going to use it, was kind of an advanced metronome.
But I was pretty surprised and kind of disappointed to find out that the internal clock of my SR-16 isn't very accurate. The BPM is a little faster than it's indicated on the screen, and the beat doesn't seem very stable.
Maybe it's only my particular SR-16. But on the other hand it gives that "live" feeling.
When syncing from another device with midi cable, everything's fine.
Being a bedroom metal guitarist myself, it was my need for drums and other bandmates that got me into drum machines and synths initially. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a good portion of your viewers that are into Metal. You've worn an Opeth shirt before... waiting for a Prog Metal album from you! \m/
I used to work with a bass player who used the SR-16 for backing him and myself on guitar.
It was an alright drum machine for it's day, I never would have imagined that people would use it for Metal...Lol
The SR-16 was a good solid drum machine (for it's time) maybe it would be fun to use it now to see what it would sound like.
I love this channel, great stuff!
Thanks!
Man this brought back memories. We had one of these in my Electronic Music Synth classes (y2k in high school) with Master Tracks Pro 5 at the helm. Yes that built-in sequencer is not even worth looking at. The built-in pads really make this more approachable than many devices at the time costing more money and without obvious and dare I say "labeled" pads. Too bad Tom Petty couldn't have used this on Running Down a Drain -- he used some less-worthy machine for that high hat click track in 1989... Great video as always.
It definitely takes some work but this thing can get stupid heavy with the right compression and reverb!! A lot of really good snares and kicks if you're into late 80s/90s anime OSTs and jpop or citypop stuff. Unrelated, but I'm pretty sure it's used on the original vocal songs for the 4kids localization of Pokemon. Listen to the snare on that opening song and you'll never unhear it :P
I honestly really wish more drum machines had "fill" patterns the way this one does, really useful feature the few times I've ever used it for DAWless stuff
It replaced all my drum plugs
I used the SR-16 exclusively as a click track when recording to 2" tape. for over a decade, back in the 2000's. Never actually tried to use it as a drum machine. I kinda like the sounds you got out of it though.
streetcleaner by godflesh uses the sr-16 and it sounds great in their noisy industrial metal. I used it for a deathgrind project recently! i love this dumb machine
It replaced all my drum plugs
I've loved godflesh forever but when I looked at how much a nightmare these are to program just made me appreciate them more.
Godflesh never fails to amaze me
pretty sure it's an hr-16, there's an interview where jkb mentions he got it cuz you can layer samples
Streetcleaner was recorded and released before this drum machine existed...
These videos are worth watching just for these music demos 🔥🔥
Happy to hear that, thanks!
They are the soundtrack to the dystopian future I didn’t know I needed.
It's great if you're looking for that early 90s Janet Jackson drum sound.
It's on So. Many. Records.
That’s a great sound.
Early 90s Janet Jackson was genius though
the sequencer is actually kind of amazing- different quantize levels at each layer- works best with an external drum pad. also the 4 outputs mean it plays well with all the old guitar pedals in your closet- it can also be bent pretty easily which makes it great for far out downsampling. pretty bad as a primary drum machine, but great as an addition to a live rig. also the midi out means it can trigger external drum modules.
Had quite some fun with it in the Bad Gear jam ua-cam.com/video/Od2_IzmO-28/v-deo.html
Yes! I did the same things with mine!
Was hoping for a Godflesh mention, how awesome.
Thanks. Godflesh 4 life!
@@AudioPilz Even tho i seem to recall them using an HR-16 raher than an SR. Makes very little difference, i know.
@@VuotoPneumaNN I think they switched later? The SR-16 has no layering, which in the HR-16 was the basis of the early Godflesh sound. But I _think_ I remember Justin mentioning this one in an interview as well?
@@Tehstroyer I'm not sure. I looked it up and found mention of them using the HR but none of the SR.
@@VuotoPneumaNN
"The HR16 blew up on our first tour of the US, and was replaced with the newer SR16."
instagram.com/p/CBGOaS9pEMz/
Not sure if it was used otherwise, but still.
Man - from synthwave to metal all in the space of 6 mins blows my mind...Another fantastish review!!!
Thank you!!!
I believe it was actually the Alesis D4 that many metal bands used. It's the same sounds, but had trigger inputs. A lot of them would play the live drums and layer the kicks and snares etc with the Alesis sounds.
Good point! It's funny that it instantly works in that context
I love that drum machine. Been gigging with one on and off for 25 years. Great video.
Thanks!!!
I used one of these back in about 1990 when I was in a goth band with my sis & her boyfriend. We started out with the drum machine, me on bass, Nick on lead guitar, my sis "singing" - 1 problem: she was utterly tone deaf. Oh well. Eventually we got a guy called Chris to do live drums alongside the SR-16. We found the SR-16 fairly easy to use, tbh. I read up on drum machine programming & Nick & I came up with some pretty good grooves. I liked that you could get a whole song programmed in, with different stuff going on in the intro, verses, chorus, hook & end. I mean, it was the first hardware drum machine I've used & compared to the 4 track portastudio we used to create tapes it was really simple.
Having a band like that should be mandatory for all young people
Mine arrived today, Nostagial for days! Will compliment my set-up.
Nice one!
As I was listening the 80's sequence I was actually thinking "This could sound good on some metal tracks"
😂 great minds...
I love your Videos. Great format!!
Thank you so much!
The metal segment sold me on this.
Best. Metal. Drummer. Ever.
I bought one used 8 years ago ( I may or may not have been high) and finally ordered a replacement power chord yesterday. Im filled with anticipation. Especially now.
Nice! That drum machine does have some really functional sounds. Have fun!
"It took me an entire night of falling asleep over pre-internet tutorials to realise I can't get any music out of it" 😂
Story of my life
Great video. I have fond memories of crafting songs on my old Alesis SR-16. If it hadn't died, I'd still be using it.
Thank you!!! Classic!!!
Bought my SR-16 a month after they came out - it's still going strong!
Nice!!!
Brutal!!!! Congratulations !!!! True metal just with samples!!!
Thank you!!!
For pub live musicians making their own backing tracks well before downloadable ones from the web, this was a godsend!
That's what it was probably built for
Your videos are very interesting to watch, thank You!
Glad to hear that! THX!
hipsters into the sr-16 + Delay add some vibey chorus guitar and we got some hot new indie pop
Currently working on the Hipster Synth episode ;)
@@AudioPilz We need it asap!
@@NathanChisholm041 c'mon I have to sleep from time to time ;)
The SR16 was basically prominent on Squarepusher's Feed Me Weird Things album. It has a pretty nice sound to it, pure '90's feel.
Ah, didn't know that, thanks for posting!
In the early 90's this was my go to for drum programming. The sounds were highly tweakable if you had the patience to figure it out. For the price it was at that point in time, it was fantastic. I used it mostly for Smooth Jazz/New Age gigs and for house music that sounded different than the standard 909. I use virtual drum machines now -- but I picked up one of these used in working condition for $40 last year for nostalgia's sake.
That one aged much better than it should have;)
New Age gigs??? I live in Glastonbury and we don't even have New Age gigs here! LOL x
@@SteveAstronaut Late 80's, early 90's, Southern California. Most "New Age" music was New Age in name only, like on the Narada and Windham Hill record labels. Hotels, quiet bars and restaurants would hire New Age artists for ambience. Most gigs were just show up, play instrumentals quietly, go home. Couple years later, same gigs were called Smooth Jazz. Then we could cover Enya AND Kenny G! Yay!
It’s 2024. This is the best episode of this show so far.
Thank you so much!!!
I'm a metalhead learning new skills during pandemic lockdown, like playing keyboards and how to program sequencers. I tend to like synthwave as well. So... good job on totally faking the metalcore.
Thanks!
Your channel is a work of art. Keep it up man.
Thanks!
A great bad gear episode would be the Jupiter 80, a synth hated for taking the Jupiter name and doing something decidedly not Jupiter 8 with it.
Thanks for the input!
Your channel is pure gold man , so glad i stumbled upon it!
Thank you so much!
Still have mine which I've owned since new. I have used the tape input to load new patterns that came on a cassette tape (same way you would load up sounds into a Korg Poly 800) I got the tape back in the 90's from a company called The Groove Factory. There are full patterns for a lot of well known songs on there :)
Nice! I wasn't aware that products like this existed!
this is by far the best search for a new drummer I've ever seen
You only have to teach him the song once
The sounds worked pretty good with a 707 kick, now I'd probably pair it with the Volca kick and an acoustic 3x13 snare.
Nice combination!
That synth wave was lovely, I’d not have a problem listening to that.
Thanks! Making synth wave is so much fun! I really thought about starting a synthwave band
@@AudioPilz please do the vocals were awesome!
Bought one in 91 loved it! kept it for years until a colleague “borrowed” it in early 2000.
Bought a new one in 06 and still use it today with my synth stuff
Yeah, this is the piece of gear people "borrow";)
First they’ll talk about it. Then make comparisons...”you should’ve gone with something else”....
“Hey can I barrow your SR-16???”
Never brings it back
I love mine. It will never leave my studio. All instruments have their place and time to be used. You never know years after this machine may be as sought after as a real TR909, 808.i know they are cheap, but they have their place in music production.
Great drum machine but there are so many of them on the used market and still available new, so I don't think they will become as sought-after as the 808 or 909
The Alesis official 'How to use our SR-16 videos 1 and 2' found here on UA-cam are actually very informative and clear (seems slightly dated but stick with it). A relatively quick way to get well aquainted with a complex and still capable machine. Also lots of in-depth hints like doubling certain drums and claps at different velocities to make a more realistic effect.
Thanks for the heads up!!!
I've got one I've had for years. I used to use it to make rave music back in the day. It's largely all I could afford then, although I did blend it with a Boss DR550. It was OK ish. Always found the drums really flat and needed some treatment to get the best out of it. Is it dated? Most definitely. While I still have it, I haven't considered using it on anything for years.
The percussion sounds are really nice for techno and the standard drumkits sit really well in the mix. I like it
@@AudioPilz Oh I do too for those specific things. If you're doing those sort of tunes (as I said, I used it a lot for rave music back in the day) it does quite well indeed.
These days, I just find it quite dated for anything else. I predominantly use an Elektron Model Samples partly just for ease of use (as it's a gem to play on the fly) and because it has the fluidity of being sample based.
Even dated stuff still has it's place.
So happy to see this video, i have a 1992 SR-16 and i use it for every single track on our new record. Little external processing goes a long way...
It sits very well in the mix
These machines circuit bend very well (the older non surface-mount ones), you can end up with something like a 32 pin patchbay that mangles the digital samples (with some crashes here and there). Breaking out the pins of one of the 2 large 32 pin chips (bottom right of the main board) to external headers is how this is acheived. Or find a few nice points on the chips and put them to switches.
Already trying to find one of the old ones. Mine has replaced my drum plugs, so it's not gonna get modded;)
AWESOME!!! Love your creativity,....laughed a lot
You are stupidly talented. I mean...just amazing.
Thank you so much!
Damn dude I can't believe how much effort you put into these,I've been binging them all!
Thanks!
The first Manic Street Preachers album is all SR16
Didn't Billy Corgan sell his recently?
This is nuts. Didn't know that but can now hear it.
Mr. Pilz, always excellent beats, no matter what gear you're using.
I'm legit now waiting for your gore-grind-death-core album.
In the making!
This is the best channel of 2020, honestly. 😄
I associate the Alesis SR-16 with all the pop/R&B/post-new jack swing because it just sounds like it. Never knew it could be an actual replacement for a metal drummer, lol.
Thanks!
You are the Simon Whistler of music tech.
Thanks! Big fan of his work!
I still have this box. I remember it was a high school graduation gift. Used to drive it through a Crate amp and distort those kicks. Think I was just trying to be Trent Reznor.
Can it NIN? I'd say yes!
I wouldn't mind knowing a little more about the guitar sampling/triggering process
Happy to hear that. There are certainly more sophisticated methods of doing that - it was more of a "proof of concept". Will try to fit in a little tutorial...
I love the sound of "unsophisticated." That's awesome! Thanks!
I don't see what is so dated about this drum machine..if you look at any drum kit the Snare, Toms, Bass drum etc. all basically sound the same. What makes the difference is what you do with the drums in the mixer. Well this drum machine contains excellent samples of wet as well as dry drum kits, so it's up to you what your final sounds winds up being/sounding like, just like a regular drum kit. And if you record your drums separately/live not sequenced snare hat toms bass drum, unless you tell whomever listens to your track/music they will never know..that's how good this machine is.
I use it a lot but modern drum plugins offer stuff no one has ever dreamed of back then
Just ran across your video after pulling my SR-16 out. I bought it new in 1995 and basically never used it because I could never get the hang of programming it and I think I had the low volume pad issue out of the box. But I discovered last night that using one of the midi lanes on my Circuit Tracks is a fantastic way to program this unit. Just write a 2 bar pattern on Tracks. Switch the SR-16 to compose mode and hit play on the Tracks. Boom it's programmed. You can over dub so you can program one instrument at a time, or do all at once, just make sure to switch back to perform mode before you start auditioning new parts to the pattern. It makes the SR-16 infinitely more useable. I am sure other sequencers will do the same, but I found the Tracks a perfect companion and I'm excited to finally use my 27 year old gear.
Great with an external sequencer!!!
I came to this channel fully expecting to see the SR16 couldn't believe it was still being sold new after all this time
Yeah, it's quite a living fossil
I had (have) one of these. I loved it, until I went through a 'circuit-bending' phase in the early 2000s, when I took it apart without documenting how I did it. Now, its innards reside in a plastic bag, with those of an ER-1, which suffered the same fate. Love your demos of the unit.
Thanks! Sad story😢
Oh my god, this brings back bad memories. I tried to record with this garbage machine decades ago, and I do sensitive singer-songwriter stuff.
There are probably better options for that. I feel you
perhaps its not the "garbage" machine but the turd trying to record garbage sensitive singer-songwriter stuff, hmmm makes one wonder
@@megatron804
"Makes one wonder" of course being one of those phrases that make it abundantly easy to identify an illiterate douche, who hasn't quite mastered the fine art of trolling, but is shitfaced enough to give it a shot. Well done, honey.
@@JohannesLabusch lol worst comeback ever your just making worse for yourself, dont put things down you have no idea how to use
I have had this machine since 1990, used it for live and recordings "loads of them", I can't lie, it worked for nearly any production, I still have it in my studio though not used very much now.
Yeah, total workhorse!
I might be a hipster cuz that was dope...who am I kidding I’m totally a hipster 🙃
Aren't we all in a way?
Excellent review of this machine. I'm addicted to watching your videos. Highly informative and awesome comedy
Thank you so much!
All gear may be useful if you use it with a critical approach. The SR16 has all you need. I've owned one since 2000 and I don't see any reason to have anything else. Just modulate it if the sounds seem to need an update or a tweak. There are plenty of sounds in that machine to build upon. The price is right and we can all benefit from a more relaxed approach to "the right gear." Use your brain and figure out how to make shit work.
It's a classic!
I bought one of these in the mid 90's, second hand. I used it for a couple of years, and then sold it. Wouldn't be surprised if it was still in use somewhere today.
@3:35 - Hipster and into it
Damn, when will the techno clubs reopen?
I just got one of these and omg it is absolutely the most sexy drum machine ever, hands down. 4 outputs, individual assignment of each separate sound, 24 separate triggerable samples when paired with the keystep pro's drum track... this thing is amazing. Lmao at the tape backup system, what trip that it actually has something that archaic. The only (bad?) thing I have noticed about it so far is that the tail of the crash samples seem a bit short. Loving it though, the separate outputs work great for a classic jamaican dub sound where only the snare is sent to the delay. Looking forward to making a lot more with it.
Don't forget to check out the "How to fake metal guitars" - tutorial
ua-cam.com/video/ZrvPfEQUttY/v-deo.html
Metal , no thanks.
Thanks I will .
I like old school heavy metal from the 70s and hair metal from the 80s 😁
Try washing the equipment BEFORE YOU MAKE A VIDEO!!! ITS GROSS!!!!!!
🤣
Sinus wave + distortion and for power chords with modulated adsr ;)