not to be confused with a drum machine, which is an earlier innovation. Similar to electronic drum modules, drum machines reproduce drum sounds and programmable sequences of drum patterns. However, they are essentially limited to this purpose. "Drum machines" were introduced in the 1980s as an accompaniment device, essentially, an "artificial drummer". In contrast, an electronic drum module is designed to be an integral part of an electronic drum kit—an interactively playable device, played (usually live) by an actual drummer as part of his or her electronic drum kit. Electronic drum modules vs "sound modules" Technically speaking, an electronic drum module typically contains its own "sound module". Although Roland refers to their electronic drum modules as "percussion sound modules", the term sound module is misleading in this context. In its purest sense, a sound module is a device that merely contains its own unique variety of sounds. The electronic drum module referred to in this article may be considered to contain a sound module; however the distinction of an electronic drum module is that it contains the logic circuits to serve specifically as a conversion device: its first goal is to "read" drum play, its second task is to convert that "play" into audible sounds. It may be considered a combination of two components: an analog-to-digital converter, which converts the drum play (analog) into digital signals, with the latter task alone being the domain of a true "sound module". Examples Roland V-Drum drum brain modules Forat F16 16 bit digital sampler drum brain ION iDM01 drum brain References Electronic musical instruments