Roland’s TR-1000 Rhythm Creator combines analog pedigree and digital innovation for a new kind of drum machine. BY PAUL CANTOR
A bout five years ago, engineers at the Japanese electronic instrument company Roland realized they had a unique conundrum. The sounds they’d created in the early 1980s, notably from the TR-808 and TR-909 Rhythm Composer drum machines, had more than stood the test of time.They were used in nearly every modern hip-hop and dance track, if not all contemporary music. But almost nobody making these songs was using the original hardware. Plug-ins and sample packs did the job instead.Young producers, raised on software like Ableton Live and FL Studio, were largely unfamiliar with Roland and its history. “When I’d pull up for an event, I’d say ‘Anyone who’s heard of the 808, put their hand up,’ and every hand would go up,” says Matthew “Recloose” Chicoine, Roland’s marketing director, and a noted DJ/producer himself. His day job involves traveling the world, evangelizing Roland’s products, and leading workshops on their machines. “Then I’d say, ‘How many people have heard of Roland?’” Not nearly as many hands would go up. It was an interesting position for Roland. Founded by engineer/inventor Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka in 1972, Roland is legendary for its pioneering work producing analog synthesizers, effects units, and sequencers. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the company helped popularize drum machines, first with the CR-78 (the 1978 machine used to make Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight”), then the TR-808 in 1980 (as heard on Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock,” among countless hip- hop records). Finally, in 1983, came the TR-909, which the architects of Detroit techno (Derrick May, Jeff Mills) and Chicago house (Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy) used to build the bedrock of electronic dance music. Those drum machines were not initially successful, commercially speaking. Only when they landed on the secondary
market, selling for a fraction of their original cost, were they picked up en masse by hip-hop and dance creators. But Roland, undeterred, kept releasing TR series drum machines. Then, in the late ’90s and early 2000s, they shifted their attention to grooveboxes like the MC-303 and MC-505, along with the SP line of samplers—especially the SP-404—which were adopted by producers like J Dilla and Madlib, who in turn inspired countless lo-fi beatmakers to grab their first hardware sampler and start digging in the crates. Historically, the company wasn’t short on innovation or influence. Some of their products, along with those from other companies, were so revolutionary that, in the early ’80s, the Musicians’ Union in the U.K. tried to enforce a ban on electronic instruments. Still, in recent years, it seemed like something wasn’t connecting. “[The] 808, 909, 707, 727, 606, 78,” Chicoine says, rattling off a laundry list of influential Roland drum machines. “This is the vernacular of modern music. The sound you’re hearing is Roland. It’s on the radio, be it 909 snares or hi-hats, 808 bass…but not everyone understands those sounds are part of Roland’s legacy.We needed to take back our legacy.” To accomplish that, what they needed was a new product, something that married their celebrated past with present-day tech in a way that pointed towards the future. And that’s when they realized the path forward required stepping back in time. Enter the TR-1000 Rhythm Creator. Released in October 2025, the TR-1000 is Roland’s first analog drum machine in over forty years—something the company’s fans have long been clamoring for.“There was such a chorus of users, for decades, saying,‘Roland, please come back and make something true analog for us.’ People wanted the real thing,” Chicoine says.“Finally, we were able to say, ‘Yeah, this is bold, let’s do it.’ But if we’re going to do analog again, we have to do it in a way that’s futuristic and forward-thinking.”
18 WaxPoetics
( opposite ) Kuniyuki Takahashi demonstrates the Roland TR-1000 Rhythm Creator at Electric Pony Studios in Los Angeles.
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