I am not a drummer.
Pictured are the Alesis HR-16 Drum Machine and the MMT-8 MIDI Sequencer. These machines were my first education in drum machine programming and how to make it work in a live band setting.
I think Alesis put these out in 1988 or so. I bought mine in 1991 with the Alesis branded cases to carry them in – very cool. A couple of MIDI cables, a couple of 1/4″ jack music cables, a direct box, and start/stop foot-switch were all we needed to get it all up and running – at first. Later we discovered there was a great need for a back up system that was more reliable than a cassette recorder, so we then went out and bought the Alesis DataDisk (and a couple of more MIDI cables).
I suppose if I had the time I could write a book on how we used these machines to work in a live setting with about 25 songs to choose from to make 12 -15 song sets for any given gig. It took a lot of time and effort trying to get the machine to sound as much like a live drummer as possible. Think I’ll just say I was very thankful to have been a very good student of math. Simple math was all we had to work out to get the sound right (most of the time). Well, math and a lot of critics with good intentions. 🙂