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So, I have some vague idea of what midi is, but never really took the time to understand it. But here's what I'm wondering about:

I have an old Roland electronic drum set (with the 'brain' and various pads). I'm pretty sure it has a midi jack, but I don't have it sitting right here in front of me. Is it possible for me to use the brain with some kind of midi controller and/or sequencer to create drum loops... or at the very least, have a more compact way to create drums sounds, rather than hooking up a bunch of different pads? If so, do you have any reccommendations for cheap pieces equipment to do such things?

I can report back with the exact Roland model if that helps. Thanks!!

If your set has MIDI in, then you should be able to use the MIDI out of another device to send pattern data. Of course without firing it up, it's hard to know how agreeable the results will be.

example: you begin a sequence or a pattern on a MIDI synth/sequencer and it goes to your set, if they're not sync'd to the same channel, you'll hear nothing (usually devices start at Channel 1, unless they've been altered during a previous session). you also may have to configure the set or the device to trigger multiple drums. if you send MIDI data to the set, you may only hear one of the drums, depending on its default settings.

If you have the right controller, you may be able to trigger all the drums of the set at once, by mapping each drum to an instrument or strip on a MIDI controller.

Do you like the sounds of the electronic set? If you haven't tested it, you may be better off just getting a self-contained instrument that doesn't need to trigger an external device. There's a lot of inexpensive controllers/desktop groove devices (Arturia Spark, Korg Volcas, et cetera) if you just want portable percussion.

drum brains are awesome for this kind of use! i've had a few and never had the drum pads so i just hooked em up to a pad controller or mpc or something and triggered them that way.

at some point i just ended up sampling all the sounds and flipping it.

even if it doesn't have midi, it usually just uses trigger inputs so u could literally trigger it w/ almost anything