Alesis HR-16

From a 1989 interview with *Guitar World* magazine: **Interviewer:** What is your actual demoing process? **Satriani:** I have an Alesis HRI6 [*sic*] and that goes into track one. After the groove is established, usually I’ll record the bass, using an old P-bass.

Included in drum machine list

This is one of many pieces of gear listed in a 2007 Computer Music feature on Venetian Snares.

Mentioned at 1:34 in this interview.

Picture 4/11 a modded HR-16 is there.

Featured in the Gear List on Richard Barbieri's website.

Billy Corgan's Alesis HR-16 was used for drum loops on a number of Smashing Pumpkins tracks, including "1979."

Dave Ball used an Alesis HR-16 on the Grid album "Electric Head," according to the liner notes.

"THE ALESIS HR-16... THIS IS THE DRUM MACHINE I USED AFTER THE SP-1200..."

** What drum machine were you using back in the day?** The original Godflesh drum machine was an Alesis HR-16. That was an amazing machine. It's fucking mental, mostly because you could layer kicks. You could layer everything. Most of what the Godlfesh early sound was—you could literally blend six kick drums. Other drum machines we played with at the time, they sounded much more plasticky and much more synthetic, and they also didn't have the ability to tune. What we were doing was, like, putting three kick drums together and tuning two of them to -12, and shit like that. We weren't doing it with any sense of technical perfection; we were doing it because it sounded rough, because it sounded raw and nasty. There was no "How's this going to sound when it's compressed?" or "Is it going to cut through the mix?" We didn't think of these things whatsoever. We just wanted to get everything as low as we possibly could.

This article lists Jakko’s gear in his Silesia Sound Studios, including this one.

"*Lincoln* to me doesn’t seem like that big of leap from the first album. When we had to write another album, we obviously didn’t have, like, five years to write *Lincoln*. So it seems we were really quick in writing songs back then. We had more of a plan. We bought the Alesis HR-16 —"

He may (or may not) be the Mayor of Simpleton, but Andy Partridge knows one thing: The Roland PG-1000 programmer that goes with his D-50 confuses the hell out of him. "I'm not a very logical person," Partridge declares, and the PG-1000 "is aggressively logical and it rather upsets me." Until he figures it out, he's happier with a "tiny little Yamaha sampler" that he used for songwriting until recently. He seems to be having more fun with a new toy, a Alesis HR-16 drum machine. Partridge records home demos on a 1982-vintage Tascam Portastudio; for that purpose he keeps a "fizzy" Session MKII amp -- "not fantastic". He was impressed with a Fender Stage Lead he played through during the Oranges and Lemons rehearsals. Oops, guitars: Until '82 he played an Ibanez Artist exclusively, but that changed when he got a Fender Telecaster Squier -- "it has a nice clangorous tone" -- that's his current electric one-and-only. On the acoustic side, Partridge has played his Martin D-35 on all XTC albums dating from English Settlement. He also has a small Yamaha acoustic for "twanging" purposes, and a "Woolworth's" bass guitar (no name on the head) with a "very unusual tuba-like tone to it." Guitar strings are D'Addario or Ernie Ball Regular Slinky. Other gear: Korg DDD-1 drum machine, Yamaha D1500 digital delay, Alesis MIDIverb, Hitachi boom box. He has PG Tips teabags but prefers coffee.

HR-16 can be seen on the left.

"I used two drum machines. For a lot of the percussion and hi-hats and things I used an RX5 - if you solo any of the cymbals you can hear the loops on them. The other thing I used was the little Alesis HR16 - again because it's a piece of cake to use. I love things which are easy to program. It's also a very real-sounding machine. The only trouble with it is that you really have to work at the hi-hats and the tambourine with the EQ to get any sort of top out of them. It's funny but I was talking to somebody who uses an Alesis and he asked me what it was I'd used for the hi-hats and tambourine. I told him and he said 'Bloody hell, I thought it was, you can hear it a mile off.'"

This Instagram photo, by Shura, shows her Alesis HR-16.

Dev discusses using the HR-16 on his own records and when producing for other artists, such as Solange.

Proof on Instagram.

> This is the first drum machine I ever owned. The dude who sold it to me told me it was “a hip hop machine” so i would need to “put it through an effects unit.” His presumptions about the kind of music I wanted to make aside, this was in, like, 1998, and let me tell you, hip hop in ‘98 was not made on any HR-16 B and Le Tigre in ‘98 was not gonna complicate matters further with any crappy FX unit this dude wanted to sell us! Nearly all the beats on our debut album were recorded directly from the stereo outs of this machine. Sounds we got considerable mileage out of were the fake 808 “rap kick,” the garish “techno snare” and the “lip pop” (i.e. the popcorn chaos on our song “The The Empty”). Although we ultimately wanted to go beyond pre-set drum sounds and we donated our **HR 16-B** to a high school music program, all of my subsequent knowledge re: sequencing and beat-making was based on my familiarity with this drum machine and so i think of it fondly. Also it has this cool flip up instruction panel on it’s face for super convenient reference.

In this interview Mike Dean talks about how he began producing and his first gear

Shawn uses a hr 16

This [image from Drab Majesty's Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/drabmajesty/photos/a.125464120933471.39257.106355476177669/365736906906190/) circa 2013 shows Deb's studio setup circa 2013, which includes an HR-16.

The equipment responsible for Torn's unique guitar treatments live revolves around a Steinberger guitar and a collection of delays and effects - a Lexicon PCM70, PCM42, with 20 seconds of delay time, ADA and Ibanez harmonisers, a BBE Sonic Enhancer and a Microverb. At home in the 'States he has an E-mu Emax sampler, Casio CZ101, TX81Z, Alesis HR16 drum machine, a Macintosh running Performer 2.3 and Intelligent Music software and "all kinds of weird home-made things."

"What you see here is a modded Alesis HR-16 drum machine. The original machine is from 1988 but when you hear the crazy modded sounds, it's a killer for sure. You can patch for hours and always get something new and strange. Not sure what each mod does but I used this for more of the one shot FX hits in our ME3 combat cues. On the Soundtrack listen to 'The Scientist.'"

The instrument appears on the list of instruments on official artist's website (http://olszak.pl/).