Live Sampling with the Roland SPD-SX: Drum Lesson with Jordan West

Out of all of Jordan West's Thursday drum lessons from the past several weeks, it would be hard to single out a favorite. But that said, she's ending the series today with a really fun tutorial. Rather than teaching a specific riff or a famous artist's drum style, Jordan shows us one of the coolest things you can do with a Roland SPD-SX Percussion Sampling Pad.

Though there are a lot of reasons to love the Roland SPD-SX, Jordan's favorite feature is its ability to sample tracks directly from a music player. You can quickly take a song off your phone, map it across the pads, and then play the samples alongside your drums. It's a quick and easy technique that Jordan thinks is massively underutilized. All you need to get started is your phone (or any other music player) and an audio cable to plug into the back of the SPD-SX.

In the video above, Jordan first demonstrates how to connect your music player to the SPD-SX and navigate to the correct menu. Using her sticks to cut up the samples, she then shows how you can modify the playback and add effects.

Be sure to check out the entire video above, where Jordan makes great use of the sample pads alongside her live drum playing. And for more drum lessons from Jordan West, click here.

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