ALESIS HR-16:B - Manual (Page 5)

INTRODUCTION
The Alesis HR-16 (High sample Rate / 16 bit drum machine) is a user friendly, yet
extremely powerful MIDI drum sequencer / sound generator. The sound generation
capabilities of the HR-16 include 16 independent drum "voices", each of which can be
assigned to any one of 49 digital samples (47 in the HR-16:B), and can be routed with a 7
position pan to one ot two sets of stereo outputs. Each voice can also be tuned
independently in 32 Increments over an octave and a half.
The sequencing of the drums is accomplished by entering record, and then playing on
the touch-sensitive drum buttons on the front panel, which is then stored into a "pattern."
There can be up to 100 patterns in the HR-16's memory (00-99). These patterns can be
anywhere from 1 to 682 beats long. The patterns can be combined into lists of patterns,
which are called "songs." There can be up to 100 songs in the HR-16's memory(00-99),
and each can contain a list of patterns up to 255 steps long.
The 16 drum pads at the front of the HR-16 are velocity-sensitive. How hard the pad is hit
determines the volume of the drum on 8 levels. 12 of the pads (all pads except Closed
Hat, Mid Hat, Open Hat, and Crash) are each directly assigned to a voice. This means that
playing a pad repeatedly will retrigger the same voce, and no other pad will effect that
voice.
Any sounds assigned to the three Hi Hat pads will all be assigned to the same voice. This
is so that playing the Closed Hat will cut off the Open or Mid Hat, for a more realistic hi hat
sound. The Crash pad is assigned to two voices that alternate. This means that
repeatedly hitting the crash pad results in two independent crashes (of the same sound)
that can overlap as they decay.
More sounds can be made to overlap by assigning the same sound to two different pads
and alternating which pad is pressed each time the sound is to be played. Only 15 voices
have been used (12 normal pads, 1 voice for Hi Hats, 2 for Crash). The 16th votes is used
for the Click, which can also be assigned to be any of the available sounds.
PLEASE NOTE THESE FEATURES
PROGRAM CHANGE THROUGH MIDI
This allows MIDI program selection of patterns to work while a pan is playing. If a new
program number is received over MIDI, this program number will be selected to be
the NEXT pattern number to play when the current pattern is finished. This functions
exactly as if the new pattern number had been selected with the keypad. If a song is
playing, MIDI program commands will be ignored.
SONG CHANGE THROUGH MIDI
MIDI program changes will select songs if the HR-16 is in Song mode, and not
playing.
SPOT ERASING
This allows spot erasing while in record mode when Quantize is OFF. The erase
button and a drum button can be held down while recording with quantize off in order
to erase all drum events (quantized or not) that occur during the time that the buttons
are held down.
Alesis HR-16 Instructions ..................................................................................................................................... Fsge 3