By Gary Cox
So you’d love to play the drums, but you live in a tiny flat with neighbours who complain when you even turn the TV on! Maybe you just don’t have the space or want to make the time and financial commitment to an acoustic kit. Also drum lessons are pretty expensive these days. Or maybe you just want a small practice kit for rudiments, or warming up. All of these are good reasons to consider the Roland RMP-5 Drum trainer.
Basically the unit is a high quality digital snare drum packed with different sounds and drum training exercises. You have two extra expansion inputs to make a basic drum kit. So you can have snare, bass drum and hi-hat’s! Then there is the beauty of headphones. Yes no one has to hear you practise anymore. All you need to do is add the optional CY5 cymbal pad, and a PD8 bass drum pad (Stands and kick pedal of your choice).
One of the real stand out functions of this unit is the inbuilt training. There are exercises for tempo, stroke balance, auto up down speed, rhythmic notes (from ½ notes to triplet 32nds). The unit can even score you on your efforts. I really like the quiet count function. Whilst you play the unit will play a metronome for a bar then remove it for a bar. Definitely great for helping you keep good time. There is also an inbuilt speaker for the metronome so you can use the unit just as a warm up pad too. You even have a mix-input for jamming along with your MP3 player etc.
The unit has over 50 CD-quality inbuilt sounds, covering all normal drums and cymbals as well as percussion, so maybe add it to your real kit for some extra percussive options.
All in all this is a really useful unit. I’m wasting heaps of time at home with mine.
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