Drum machine

• 1. Introduction

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  The drum machine sits at the center of some of the most recognizable sounds in modern music. In 1980, two different machines arrived almost simultaneously and changed what popular music could be. One of them cost $4,995 and was bought by Prince, who used it on nearly all of his most popular albums. The other was an analog box that Roland discontinued after building roughly 12,000 units, convinced it had failed. That second machine, the TR-808, would eventually appear on more hit records than any other drum machine in history.

  Before either of those existed, a nightclub owner in Tokyo was being advised by an accordion player about a rhythm machine from Wurlitzer. A recording engineer for Steely Dan was building a custom sampler in his spare time. An avant-garde composer named Henry Cowell was asking a Russian inventor named Léon Theremin to build something that no keyboard player could ever perform. The drum machine has a stranger, older, and more circuitous origin than most listeners suspect. What it became, and how it got there, is a story that spans Tokyo clubs, Los Angeles session studios, Detroit warehouses, and the birth of hip hop.

• 2. Mechanical Ancestors

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  Léon Theremin completed the Rhythmicon in 1930-32, built at the request of Henry Cowell. Cowell wanted an instrument that could play compositions with multiple rhythmic patterns based on the overtone series. The patterns were too complex to perform on any existing keyboard. Theremin's invention could produce sixteen different rhythms, each linked to a particular pitch, and could combine them all at once if desired. When it was publicly introduced in 1932, the Rhythmicon drew considerable interest. Then Cowell set it aside.

  In 1957, Harry Chamberlin, an engineer from Iowa, took a different approach. His Chamberlin Rhythmate let users choose between 14 tape loops of real drum kits and percussion instruments playing various beats. Chamberlin designed it for family singalongs. About 100 units were sold.

  Wurlitzer's 1959 Side Man worked differently again. It generated sounds mechanically using a rotating disc, like a music box, with a slider that controlled tempo anywhere between 34 and 150 beats per minute. The Side Man was successful enough to alarm the American Federation of Musicians, which ruled in 1961 that local jurisdictions could not ban it outright, though they could prohibit its use for dancing. Wurlitzer kept making the Side Man until 1969.

  Raymond Scott built his own machines during this same period. In 1960 he constructed something he called the Rhythm Synthesizer, and in 1963 he built a drum machine he named Bandito the Bongo Artist. Both were used on recordings for his Soothing Sounds for Baby series in 1964.

• 3. Tokyo Nights and Transistors

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  A nightclub owner in Tokyo named Tsutomu Katoh became unexpectedly important to the history of the drum machine in the early 1960s. An accordion player named Tadashi Osanai, who had studied mechanical engineering at the University of Tokyo, was advising Katoh about the Wurlitzer Side Man he used for accompaniment at the club. Osanai convinced Katoh to back him in building something better.

  In 1963, their new company, Keio-Giken, which would later become Korg, released its first rhythm machine: the Donca-Matic DA-20. It used vacuum tube circuits for sound and a mechanical wheel for rhythm patterns. It was a floor-standing machine with a built-in speaker and a keyboard for manual play. Its price was comparable to the average annual income in Japan at the time.

  Over the following years, Keio-Giken replaced the unstable vacuum tubes with transistors on the Donca-Matic DC-11. By 1966, the bulky mechanical wheel was also replaced on the Donca-Matic DE-20 and DE-11. In 1967, the Mini Pops MP-2 was built as an option for the Yamaha Electone organ, establishing Mini Pops as a line of compact desktop rhythm machines. In the United States, later Mini Pops models were sold under the Univox brand.

  Also in 1967, Ikutaro Kakehashi, who had founded Ace Tone and would later found Roland Corporation, developed a preset rhythm-pattern generator using a diode matrix circuit. Ace Tone commercialized it as the FR-1 Rhythm Ace, which offered 16 preset patterns and four buttons to manually trigger individual sounds: cymbal, claves, cowbell, and bass drum. The Hammond Organ Company adopted the FR-1 for incorporation into their newest organ models. In the US, the units were also sold under the Multivox brand, and in the UK under the Bentley Rhythm Ace brand.

• 4. First Songs, First Arguments

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  The first major pop song to use a drum machine was Robin Gibb's "Saved by the Bell," which reached number 2 in Britain in 1969. It arrived before most listeners knew drum machines existed as a category.

  Sly and the Family Stone used drum machine tracks heavily on There's a Riot Goin' On, released in 1971. Their single "Family Affair" made them the first group to reach number 1 on the pop charts with a drum machine-powered record. The German krautrock band Can used one on "Peking O" and "Spoon." Timmy Thomas built his 1972 single "Why Can't We Live Together" around a distinctive drum machine and keyboard arrangement. Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds also appeared in 1972.

  Kingdom Come's Journey, recorded in November 1972, was the first album where a drum machine produced all the percussion. They used a Bentley Rhythm Ace. French singer-songwriter Léo Ferré combined a drum machine with a symphonic orchestra in "Je t'aimais bien, tu sais..." from L'Espoir, released in 1974. Miles Davis' live band began using one in 1974, played by percussionist James Mtume, and the results can be heard on Dark Magus from 1977.

  Meanwhile, in 1972, Eko released the ComputeRhythm, one of the first programmable drum machines. It had a 6-row push-button matrix for manual pattern entry and a slot for punch cards with pre-programmed rhythms. The PAiA Programmable Drum Set, released in 1975, was sold as a kit the buyer assembled themselves. Steely Dan recording engineer Roger Nichols built his own 125kHz/12-bit sampling drum machine in 1978, which he named Wendel. It was used on the Gaucho album in January 1979.

• 5. The Linn Machine and L.A. Panic

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  The Linn LM-1 Drum Computer arrived in 1980 at a price of $4,995 and changed the recording industry's relationship with drummers. It was the first commercially released drum machine to use digital samples, meaning it played back recordings of actual drum hits rather than synthesized tones. Only about 500 were ever made.

  Its sound defined an era. The LM-1 can be heard on The Human League's Dare, Gary Numan's Dance, Devo's New Traditionalists, and Ric Ocasek's Beatitude, among hundreds of other records from the period. Prince bought one of the first LM-1s and used it on nearly all of his most popular albums, including 1999 and Purple Rain.

  Fear spread through the session musician community in Los Angeles. It was widely believed the LM-1 would put every session drummer in the city out of work. Many of Los Angeles's top session drummers, including Jeff Porcaro, bought their own drum machines and learned to program them in order to stay employable. Linn even marketed the LinnDrum directly to drummers.

  A cheaper version called the LinnDrum appeared in 1982, priced at $2,995. Not all of its voices were tunable, but it included a crash cymbal as a standard sound, a feature that had required an expensive third-party modification on the original LM-1. The LinnDrum can be heard on The Cars' Heartbeat City and Giorgio Moroder's soundtrack for Scarface.

  Oberheim followed the LM-1 with the DMX, which also used digitally sampled sounds and a swing feature similar to Linn's. The DMX became a fixture in the early hip-hop scene. Other manufacturers produced their own machines: the Sequential Circuits Drumtraks and Tom, the E-mu Drumulator, and the Yamaha RX11.

• 6. The 808 and 909

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  Roland launched the TR-808 Rhythm Composer in 1980, the same year as the LM-1. Unlike the Linn machine, the 808 was entirely analog; its sounds came from hardware circuits rather than digital samples. It was also the first fully programmable drum machine that let users build a complete percussion track from start to finish, with breaks and rolls.

  The 808 arrived before electronic music was mainstream. Reviews were mixed. Its drum sounds were considered unrealistic, and the machine was a commercial failure. Roland built approximately 12,000 units before discontinuing it when the semiconductors it required became impossible to restock.

  The used market changed everything. Affordable 808 units reached underground musicians who valued its sounds for their strangeness, especially the deep, booming bass drum that no real drum kit could match. Early hits like Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" brought the 808's sound to millions of listeners. Over time, it was used on more hit records than any other drum machine. Its influence on hip hop has been compared to the Fender Stratocaster's influence on rock. Its sounds continue to appear as standard samples in music software and modern drum machines.

  In 1983, Roland followed with the TR-909, the first Roland drum machine to use MIDI, which allows devices from different manufacturers to synchronize. The 909 also used samples for some of its sounds. Like the 808, it sold poorly and circulated cheaply on the used market. Alongside the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer, the 909 shaped the development of techno, house, and acid music.

• 7. Persistence and Revival

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  By 2000, standalone drum machines had become less common. General-purpose hardware samplers controlled by sequencers, software-based sampling, and music workstations with integrated drum sounds had partly displaced them. But traditional drum machines never disappeared. Companies including Roland, Zoom, Korg, and Alesis continued making them. Alesis's SR-16 had remained popular since its introduction in 1991.

  In the 2010s, a renewed interest in analog synthesis brought a new wave of analog drum machines. Budget options included the Korg Volca Beats and the Akai Rhythm Wolf. Mid-priced machines included the Arturia DrumBrute. High-end options included the MFB Tanzbär and the Dave Smith Instruments Tempest. Roland released the TR-08 and TR-09 as digital recreations of the original 808 and 909. Behringer released an analog clone of the 808 called the Behringer RD-8 Rhythm Designer. Korg released the Volca Beats in 2013.

  Through all of this, researchers have noted something drum machines cannot replicate: the feel of human drumming. Scientific studies have found that human drummers can play ahead of or behind the beat for specific sections of a song, respond in real time to changes in a live performance, and produce a range of rhythmic variations that no machine can reproduce. Those limitations have not stopped record labels from using drum machines to reduce studio costs. They have only made the human qualities harder to hear when they are absent.