couldn’t really imagine that anything could stand in for my actual original Roland drum machines that I had collected over the years. Once I got [the TR-1000] in my hands, and started to understand this was more of a serious machine, I got amped.” El-P’s change of heart would have him rewarded. The TR- 1000 has joined his repertoire of trusted studio tools.“It’s officially been standing in for my 808 and 909,” he says.“That was the first test for me because I know those machines so well, and imitations have never really matched up. But, because they put the actual analog circuits in there, it’s not merely a substitute. I actually use the drums. It’s become my go-to quick drum pattern [and] demo machine. [It’s] always synced up, always dope sounding, quick, and easy to play with, and [there’s] no clicking a mouse—which for me is really liberating.” For a hip-hop beatmaker such as El-P, the sampler feature was another gamechanger. “Using your own drums and sounds but with the swing of the 808 sequencer is something I’ve wanted forever,” he says. “[It’s] the ability to easily, tactilely blend sounds of my own with the classic sounds to create new, original shit.” Roland took a gamble revisiting analog technology in a digital world. But even with a retail cost of $2700—slightly out of reach for novices—it seems to have paid off. The TR-1000 has already proven to be a hit.The initial production run sold out in two days, leaving them working feverishly to meet demand. “We know when we listen to the artists, we make better products,” says Chicoine. “Artists are key to our future and our success. They have been, they will continue to be. [But] let’s embrace them by design, and create an instrument with them, with their feedback.That’s how we wound up with the TR-1000. We got the formula right.”
“I was scared they were going to stop dancing and start fighting because it was just a drum machine—not a record,” Egyptian Lover said in an interview for Roland’s website. “But nobody stopped dancing. Actually, people started dancing even harder. I broke it down without the cowbell, without the hi-hat, then brought the cowbell back in, hi-hat, and the rimshot.Then I changed the beat, and everybody freaked out.” Following that, Egyptian Lover released a series of influential electro hip-hop records; again, he used the 808 in ways never imagined. While working on 1984’s “Egypt, Egypt,” he began plugging cords into the machine’s inputs when he noticed a “duda-duda-duda-duda” sound. The engineer told him it was coming from the machine. Only then did he learn that the 808 had an accent function that could alter the drum velocity, and that this function could be programmed to create a melody.“I put that in my song, and that was like the Egyptian Lover sound,” he told Splice, the cloud-based sample platform, in an interview. “It was created right there.” Egyptian Lover still plays an 808 at gigs around the world, which is why Roland consulted with him on the TR-1000, too. When he got his hands on it, he was blown away.“The TR-1000 is like ten 808s,” he told Roland. “You can have that thing for a year and still discover things you didn’t know. Whatever you can think of, you can do…[it’s] the future of drum machines. I can see a DJ bringing the TR-1000 to the club and have it rockin’, like I do with my 808.” El-P, famed for his work in Company Flow and Run the Jewels as well as for producing underground rap classics like Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein through his influential label Definitive Jux, has been using Roland machines since starting out in the ’90s. The 808 and 909 are favorites. Needless to say, he was skeptical of any effort to improve upon these staples of his production sound. “When [Roland] first approached me, I wasn’t too excited,” he says.“I’ve had a bias against remakes of classic gear or hybrids. Most of my experiences with stuff like that [have] been disappointing. I
For more about the Roland TR-1000 Rhythm Creator, visit Roland.com
22 WaxPoetics
( opposite ) Egyptian Lover in the mix at Electric Pony Studios.
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