In 1983 Roland set out to fix a machine that was not broken so much as misunderstood. The TR-808 had been dismissed as a toy, its synthetic booms judged unconvincing next to the sampled snares of the LinnDrum. So the TR-909 chased credibility: a crisper snare, six-bit sampled hi-hats and cymbals, and MIDI to lock […]
Most instruments are designed, then learned. The Roland TB-303 was designed, abandoned, and only then learned, and the learning had almost nothing to do with what its engineers intended. That gap between purpose and use is the whole story, and it is a lesson every producer eventually absorbs. The technique can outlive the function it [&
