Features » Long Reads » Drop The Boom: The Story Of The Roland TR-1000

Drop The Boom: The Story Of The Roland TR-1000

What do you get when you combine 808 and 909 analogue drum synthesis, SP-404MKII-style sampling, and input from Detroit legends like Underground Resistance? The TR-1000, a modern drum machine that is more than just the sum of an equation.

You know the story. At the dawn of the 1980s, Roland dropped the TR-808, its first non-preset drum machine, to little fanfare and even less market enthusiasm. The company followed it up with the TR-909 in 1983 to similarly lacklustre sales. It was only when underground artists discovered the machines, particularly the sheer sonic power of their analogue kick drums – the boom of the 808 and the punch of the 909—that their cultural cache began to rise. Fast forward to the 21st century, and the two drum boxes have achieved an absolutely mythical musical status.

How can Roland possibly live up to the sky-high expectations of the music producers of the world and deliver a modern drum machine worthy of the TR name? This is the story of the TR-1000, a thoroughly modern drum machine that manages to reference the past while avoiding former CEO Jun-ichi Miki’s famous quote about not chasing ghosts by pushing against the boundaries of what a TR-style drum machine can be.

TR-1000: Tomorrow Returns

Although TR originally stood for Transistor Rhythm, referencing the then-new type of component inside the instrument, Roland is marketing the 1000 as Tomorrow Returns, a cheeky nod to the legendary status of the source instruments as well as to Roland’s oft-quoted slogan that it designs the future.

“This is 100% future,” stresses Daichi Tawara, Product Development Manager and lead engineer on the TR-1000, when asked if reverence for the past prevented Roland from adding modern features to it.

Although you can elevator pitch it as 808 + 909 + SP-404, the TR-1000 really is more than the sum of what that equation may suggest. Yes, it features sounds from the company’s two most famous drum machines, as well as the engine from the uber-popular phrase sampler SP-404MKII, but this is more than just a trip down memory lane.

The Return of Analogue: New Shades and Colours

For many producers, the return of analogue to the TR line for the first time in more than 40 years will be the biggest reason to celebrate. Have no fear: the analogue circuit in the TR-1000 is every bit as powerful as you might hope. With 16 analogue sounds covering kick, snare, toms, and a selection of other percussion elements from both the 808 and 909, it booms when needed, and it punches when required. And it sounds absolutely massive.

“If we were going to do analogue, we didn’t want to make replicas or carbon-copies of the original sounds,” explains Peter Brown, Product Planning Manager on the TR-1000. “We wanted users to hear new colours and shades to these sounds.” To achieve this, the team not only rebuilt the circuits from the original machines, it added new functionality not present before, such as a wider pitch range, longer decay and tighter velocity response. “It took a lot of trial and error,” Peter adds, “but I’m happy with the result and believe owners of the originals will appreciate those enhancements.”

For many producers, the return of analogue to the TR line for the first time in more than 40 years will be the biggest reason to celebrate

Finding the Analogue Benchmark

It’s all well and good to replicate the circuits of original 808s and 909s, but which iterations do you choose to model? You may have heard that the sound of drum machines can change over time due to the degradation of internal components, but did you know that different runs of the 808 and 909 actually sound different? The brightness of the 808 clap changed over time, as did the overall sound of the 909, with later serial numbers being drastically different.

Rather than copy one machine faithfully, Roland interviewed artists about which sound they preferred and created a composite of sounds, developing what the company is calling a new benchmark. “Every musician had their own idea about what was ‘right’,” says Daichi.

And, should you prefer an alternate version of a sound, it probably exists in the ACB (Analogue Circuit Behaviour) bank, which contains digital recreations of not only the 808 and 909 but other famous machines like the 606, 707, and CR-78. There’s also a new circuit-bent ACB engine with additional sound-shaping parameters.

Finding the right analogue sound also extended to the schematic level of the original drum machines. “Here’s a story,” says Daichi. “If you search for the 808 circuit or 909 circuit, you can find many service notes. But some portions of the circuits are wrong. If you just copy it, the sound is very different, so we investigated it and created the correct sound.”

Another way that the 1000 differs from the originals is the architecture of the individual drum sounds. Each has not only the sound generator (analogue, ACB, etc.) but also its own digital filter, modulation and effects. Applying compression and saturation at the core level opens up sound design possibilities to create the kinds of modern techno and bass sounds that we’ve become used to—it’s been a long time since anyone used dry 909 sounds on a track, after all.

Roland also put analogue on the master in the form of Analogue FX. Although it’s got a variety of sound generators, both analogue and digital, they sound like they’re all of a piece thanks to the Jupiter-6 multimode filter and analogue drive sitting at the end of the line. And, in a clever bit of tweaking, the drive won’t siphon off the bass frequencies even when cranked. You can even bypass the DAC and run directly out from the analogue master if you want to get really nerdy about it.

You could even DJ with the 1000 and load in full songs thanks to the 64GB of memory and 16-minute per-sample limit. That’s crazy

Sampling: The Other Half of the Story

We’ve only told half of the story so far. Although the TR machines are legendary among dance music producers, Roland has another series that’s equally as influential in the underground: SP phrase samplers. Carving out their own niche in the beat-making market, SP samplers have been used by everyone from J Dilla (famously on Donuts) and Flying Lotus to James Blake and Radiohead. Although the TR-8S added sampling to the TR lineup, the TR-1000 ups the ante by incorporating the SP-404MKII engine into its workflow, with true sampling through the external inputs, loop slicing and auto chop, and resampling all on the menu. You could even DJ with the 1000 and load in full songs thanks to the 64GB of memory and 16-minute per-sample limit. That’s crazy.

This makes a little more sense when you consider that Takeo Shirato, the Division Head of the Electronic Instrument Business Division at Roland and spearhead of the TR-1000 project, is also the person who brought the SP-404MKII to life. Sample chopping with non-destructive sample slicing was also a big request from artists who had an early look at the 1000.

You’re not restricted to rigid TR-style sequencing either. Although you can make the 1000 machine-like if you want, it’s just as capable of wonky sequences, with off-the-grid live recording, sub-steps, per-track quantisation, probability, and other parameters to loosen up sequences.

Detroit Inspired

To ensure the TR-1000 hit the right target, Roland spent a considerable amount of time speaking with artists. “Early conversations were important to set the tone of the product,” says Peter Brown about why this was important. “The elemental design of it was very Detroit-inspired. We spent a lot of time with Underground Resistance and received great feedback, which guided the design and sound approach.” Other Detroit luminaries involved included Carl Craig, Aux 88 and BMG. “The artists kept telling us they wanted to ‘freak the sound.’ We had to take that sentiment and make it real,” Peter said in an article on the Roland blog.

Roland meets with Carl Craig and King Britt.

Being a Japanese company, Roland also reached out to artists from the Land of the Rising Sun. “Our circuit-bent ACB sounds were inspired by conversations with Satoshi Tomiie, Kuniyuki Takahashi, and others,” adds Peter. “It was interesting to see which artists gravitated towards what sounds. Some were only focused on the analog sounds, whereas others were captivated by the digital and sampling side.” Other musicians involved in the process included Overmono, Floating Points, KiNK, and the Egyptian Lover.

“It wasn’t always a home run,” Peter says on the Roland site. “Working artists or folks making their primary source of income producing music are least likely to abandon tools they know inside and out. It motivated us to design the TR-1000 to be familiar while adding new elements that fix something or make things easier for them.”

Four-Year Journey

In the press release for the new drum machine, there’s a photo of the development team all wearing masks. Considering that development likely began during the COVID era, we wonder how long it took to realise the TR-1000. “Four years,” Daichi answers. This is long for a drum machine or synthesiser, with the analogue tuning and artist discussions taking an exceptionally long time. When asked what he’s most proud of, Daichi says the analogue sound. That, and multiple-language meetings between the various teams working on the project, which included groups in Japan, the United States and Italy (“Communication was sometimes difficult!” he laughs).

With so much crammed into the machine, Daichi estimates it will take users two years to learn everything that it can do, suggesting using it with a pedal, assigning modulation to the effects, and plugging into the trigger out to control the filter cutoff CV in various ways to trick it out. He also has a lot planned for future updates, rattling off a shopping list of new features that we aren’t at liberty to reveal, but that will only extend the amount of time it will take you to master the machine.

“Roland drum sounds have become so enmeshed in music, across dozens of genres,” sums up Peter. “Folks can get versions of these sounds through numerous avenues, but there is something irreplaceable about the hardware experience. It’s not just the analogue sounds, but how the unit feels, the weight, the materials we used, and the features it comes with. We approached the TR-1000 with that in mind.”