The Best Drum Pads for Studio Use and Live Performance
Electronic drum pads for your studio or live rig.
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We’re looking at some of the best drum pads for music production and live performance to give your drums a more organic and exciting feel.
Whether you’re a strictly acoustic drummer by trade, an MPC button basher, or simply a beatmaker using FL Studio, you can benefit by using electronic drum pads in your studio or live setup.
Drum pads are available in many different forms. While some are velocity-sensitive multizone MIDI controllers, others offer vast sample libraries or synth engines with responsive playback triggers.
Choosing the Best Drum Pads
Because each drum pad design has different strengths, they are better suited to different stages of your workflow. While some shine in electronic music production setups, others are designed to complement your drum kit on stage.
For this reason, it’s important to think about where a drum pad will best fit into your creative process or live rig. We’ll go through some examples and on the way, we’ll discover exactly where the pieces fit.
Keith McMillen BopPad
The Keith McMillen BopPad is a great solution for giving your MIDI drum programming a more human feel or you just need a versatile trigger pad to control other samplers, drum machines, or sound modules.
Each of the BopPad’s 4 zones is independently programmable, providing velocity and pressure-sensitive triggers with MPE support. Furthermore, with each zone, you can send up to 6 MIDI notes and 5 MIDI CC messages.
In addition, there are 7 preset dynamics curves and a slot for a user preset. What’s more, the BopPad sends pitch bend, channel pressure, and polyphonic aftertouch. It also has standalone functionality with the optional MIDI Expander and you can mount it to a cymbal stand with the BopPad Mount.
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Yamaha FGDP-30 and FGDP-50
Instead of taking a traditional role, the Yamaha FGPD series presents an entirely new way to trigger or program drums. With a pad layout optimized for your fingers and thumbs, you have the power to play an entire drum kit in the palm of your hand.
Both the FGDP-30 and FGDP-50 include sound libraries with 39 and 48 preset kits respectively. Meanwhile, there is also MIDI support, and the FGDP-50 even has a USB port for sending MIDI to external devices.
Whether you use them as standalone instruments or as part of a larger setup, the Yamaha Finger Drum Pads provide an exciting new approach to drum triggering.
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Clavia Nord Drum 3P
If you’re looking for a different approach to drum triggering, with the power to design your own drum sounds, the Nord Drum 3P offers a versatile synthesis platform with multi-pad and kick trigger inputs.
With the Nord Drum’s six channels, you can select individual drum sounds from the 8 sound banks, each with 50 presets. Sounds are generated with resonant, subtractive, and FM synthesis engines, with EQ, drive, and crush effects on each channel.
In addition, there are reverb and delay effects available per channel so you have a great platform for creating drums, percussion, and a wide range of other atonal textures too.
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Roland SPD-SX PRO
The SPD-SX PRO is the flagship sample triggering drum pad from Roland, with nine pads and 32 GB of internal storage memory. The connectivity is extensive, with four trigger inputs, four direct outputs, MIDI I/O, and USB inputs for storage devices and computer interfacing.
To manage the kits, there is a dedicated app for Mac and Windows. This also allows you to import samples easily. Besides audio recording, there is also a 16-step pad sequencer that widens the creative scope.
Overall, the SPD-SX PRO is a versatile professional drum pad sampler that can be easily incorporated into your acoustic or e-drum setup.
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Pearl MalletStation EM1
For the more orchestrally inclined, the Pearl MalletStation EM1 offers a 3-octave range for triggering both software and hardware instruments (with the KMI SoftStep MIDI Expander).
This mallet MIDI controller is constructed using aluminium and steel and it can be mounted directly onto your Xylophone, Vibraphone, or Glockenspiel stand.
Besides USB, there is connectivity for footswitches, as well as expression and sustain pedals. Overall, with the assignable faders and buttons, the MalletStation can offer something unique to percussionists.
- More from Pearl
More about the Best Drum Pads:
- All about Drums
- More about Music Production
*Note: This article contains affiliate links that help us fund our site. Don’t worry: the price for you always stays the same! If you buy something through these links, we will receive a small commission. Thank you for your support!
- Keith McMillen BopPad: Keith McMillen Instruments
- FGDP-30: Yamaha
- FGDP-50: Yamaha
- Nord Drum 3P: Nord
- Roland SPD-SX Pro: Roland
- Pearl MalletStation EM1: Pearl
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