Re: Alesis HR- 16 drum machine

[Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>]

At 2:36 PM -0700 8/22/99, Tim Nelson wrote:
>Hi Kelly,
>
>I'm not sure, because I've never had mine "lock up" on me, but, y'know,
>I'll bet it does clear everything, because Alesis highly recommends saving
>the SR-16's memory to tape or MIDI before re-initializing. The manual is
>kind of vague; it could be interpreted as either clearing ALL memory, or
>all user-input changes, so it would be safer to assume that you'd lose 
>your
>pre-sets. If the HR- works the same way, this would leave Jeff right about
>where he started, wouldn't it?

the re-init on the HR-16's clears the pattern and song memory, leaving all
the patterns as empty, 2-bar, 4/4. Doesn't restore original patterns.

>Someone in this position would probably have
>to either find someone who's made a tape backup and load from that, or 
>find
>someone who's got a HR-16 that still has all its presets and get the two
>machines to talk to each other via MIDI.

I think I have a backup tape of the HR-16B original patterns. They probably
are not the same as the HR-16, so it probably won't help. (the "B" had
different samples, more "aggressive".)  I saved them right after I got it,
then reinitialized to have the whole thing blank. Didn't want the whole
memory used up with somebody else's patterns that I was never going to use.
I'm not sure why you'd want the original preset patterns anyway. As I
recall they were kinda cheesy, or too busy trying to show off the features
of the thing. Why not just do your own?

I like those old HR-16 drum machines. I use it for midi clock mainly, it's
very solid and easy to control, with a nice slider for tempo. The samples
in it are really limited of course, but it's got 4 outputs and ok for basic
stuff. If you play with the pitch shifting and run different outputs to
different filters and effects, it can still be pretty useful. Definitely
back up what you do on it though. I had mine lose it's memory once when I
turned it on, killing a whole bunch of patterns and songs I had put a lot
of time into. I've heard this happens every so often with these. Naturally
I didn't have an up to date backup.....

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
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