The instrument
The DDR-30 Alpha Drum is a digital PCM drum module built by Roland and introduced during 1985 Summer NAMM industry trade show in New Orleans. It is designed to pair with PD-10 and PD-20 pads to form the Alpha Drum System, or via MIDI controller (e.g. Roland Pad 8). The DDR-30 and Alpha Drums was the first-generation of Roland electronic drum sets.
Details
The Roland DDR-30 is both a tone generator and a trigger module. It has 6 voices: Bass, snare and four toms. Each voice has four digitally sampled 12-bit PCM sounds that can be modified with 16 parameters, saved as drum patch presets and combined into drum kits. The parameters are grouped into processing groups, including attack, decay, pitch, EQ, bend and gate.
The DDR-30 has six XLR input jacks for connection to the Roland PD-20 drum pads and PD-10 or PD-11 kick drum. It is not compatible with modern Roland triggers (PD-21, PD-31, PD-8, etc.) that use 1/4 inch TRS cables, but can be triggered via MIDI commands from a variety of controllers (keyboard, drum machine, sequencer, computer or percussion controller). The Pad 8 percussion controller from Roland can control the Drum Module via MIDI.