Roland R8

One of the very best drum machines ever. It has excellent sounds which can be expanded by adding additional sound cards (808 and 909 cards). Great rock, electronic, ethnic and industrial style drumkits! Most of the sounds are editable - tune, decay, attack, nuance, output, etc...

But its coolest tricks are the Feel Patches which give your program a human-like groove! The sounds are ROM based samples, the R8 has 32 note polyphony, 68 instruments, 100 patterns and 10 songs! The R8 later became the R8mkII with more memory and sounds. It is used by Orbital, Underworld, Jimmy Edgar, Autechre, 808 State, Dave Holmes, Fluke, Human League and The Shamen.

Roland R8mkII

A single-space rack-mount version - the R-8M - was also available. It had no sequencer but it did have the R-8 sounds and the ability to read R-8 expansion sound cards. There were also 8 individual outputs, 12 voices polyphony and 4-part multitimbral MIDI. Later, an mkII model was released with upgraded features and memory (pictured above).

31 VISITOR COMMENTS

Ike M

September 26, 2011 @ 12:51 am

I was one of the first in the ATL to use this monster of a drummer. By far, this was one of the best drum machines I ever owned!
I used to tune the percussion instruments and use them as guitar licks down in the mix, as well as using the 808 kick and toms for musical sounds.
This machine was built like a tank and I bought the R8 MkII as soon as it was released in 1993. I still own both to this day.
It was so easy to use and program. The pads were not as comfy as Akai MPC pads but they got the job down. Separate outs as well. Sweet drummer.

bass4bass

June 2, 2011 @ 12:47 pm

I bougth brand new, very good Rom cards, I used it for about 5 years and then bought the rack mount version. Now live I could have a possibillity of 4 different card sounds. I had a whole lot of sounds available, So what I did was put my Bass drum on 1 channel, My Snare's on 1 ect,So Live I could control each sound. And all of my sequencing tracks had a different kit, In the end what I did is use my R-8 as a controller to record pattern in my sequencer, tweek it a little and voila! no need for memory in the R-8. Unfortunatly the button are in rough shape I guest I'm a too aggresive Drummer!

charles

May 17, 2011 @ 4:55 pm

hey darcy contact me @
charles.copp@sympatico.ca
i own a r8m and have great results using it via midi control

charles

Endless Shame

May 6, 2011 @ 4:28 am

@Darcy Chubbs
Tried this? : ftp://ftp.roland.co.uk/ProductSupport/R-8M/01_R-8M_OM.pdf
Reg ards
www.endlessshame.com

Darcy Chubbs

April 26, 2011 @ 11:14 pm

I am aware that it is against the rules to request help but if anyone can direct me to a good source of information for the rackmount R8M version of this unit I would be much obliged. Perhaps there are other users who might benefit from knowing this information as well. I want to use mine as a sound module for my midi file player. Thank you

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