Tag: Roland

Listened BBC Radio 1 – Radio 1 and 1Xtra’s Stories, 808s, 303s and 909s from BBC

Kutski discovers how the Roland 808, 303 and 909 helped sculpt the sound of modern music.

This BBC documentary walks through the history of music associated with the TR-808 and the replacement machines that followed. It captures various sections to highlight the sound.
Bookmarked Dropping Acid by Shuja Haider (Logic Magazine)

Today, contemporary pop music has fully incorporated acid house’s sonic range, if not its production method. Producers used it as a starting point for the sound of R&B and hip-hop in the new millennium—in 2000, Timbaland’s backing track for Aaliyah’s “Try Again” used a TB-303 for its bass line, inspiring countless producers to imitate the sound on other synthesizers and computers. For his part, Pierre sees something prophetic in the name that he and Earl Smith chose for their work: Phuture. “Twenty-six years later and acid is still going strong,” he said in 2011. “You can see the proof of this when platinum-selling groups and artists like LMFAO and Skrillex are putting ‘acid’ in their songs.”

Shuja Haider talks about the sounds and methods associated with Acid House music. Along with the TR808, this article documents the place of the TB303 on modern music.
Bookmarked The mysterious heart of the Roland TR-808 drum machine (secretlifeofsynthesizers.com)

It is not really possible (at least thus far) to build an analogue copy of a Roland TR-808 without these specific transistors. Some clones have been released and some people have even attempted to build a DIY version using standard 2SC828’s and they discovered that it sounds very wrong. That’s because there is no transistor or zener diode on the planet that has the exact noise spectral profile and output level of the 2SC828-RNZ transistors from the specific 1970’s batch that was used in the production of the TR-808. If the transistor fails in a TR-808 it must only be replaced with a transistor from that original batch or it will no longer sound like a healthy TR-808. When Roland ran out of them they had to discontinue production of the instrument because the noise characteristic of these transitors is crucial to the all important snare and hand clap sounds and that white noise is also then filtered into pink noise for other sounds in the instrument. If you put a standard 2SC828-R into a TR-808 in place of the noise selected part the sound completely changes. As mentioned earlier in the article these transistors are in fact not technically speaking 2SC828’s, if they were they would not have been rejected so putting a 2SC828 in place of Q35 is futile, it’s the wrong part. Fortunately the transistor is not prone to failing so if you own an original 808 then it’s not something you should worry about.

This post on the history of the 2SC828-R transistor central to the Roland TR-808’s sound reminds me of Steven Johnson’s podcast that explored stretching instruments to breaking point. I am intrigued at the idea that to get the sound, Roland sort transistors that were deemed to be ‘out of specification’.