Electronic percussion instrument having groupable playing pads

Abstract

An electronic percussion musical instrument comprises a plurality of playing pads for playing music by striking the face of each pad. The pads are configured to work either as individual pads respectively for playing different percussion tones or as grouped pad zones by combining some of the pads, each zone playing a same percussion tone. Plural timbres of musical tones are stored in a storage unit and are respectively allocated to the individual playing pads or the grouped pad zones. The grouped pad zone can be handled just as a wide area pad. When an individual pad or a grouped pad zone is struck, the allocated tone will be generated. Some of the pads or grouped pad zones can be used as a special playing technique instruction pad to input an instruction to impart an effect of special playing technique to the tones to be generated. As a tone playing pad is struck with the special playing technique instruction pad being pressed, a musical tone allocated to the tone playing pad is generated with the special playing technique effect being imparted thereto. The pads can be two-dimensional and three-dimensional.