Roland R-8 Human Rhythm Composer
Roland R-8
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 R-8 has 32 note polyphony, 68 instruments, 100 patterns and 10 songs! The R-8 later became the R-8mkII 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 R-8mkII
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).
- Demos & Media
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Video 1 - Roland R-8 MKII pattern editing R-8 drum machineAudio Clip 1 - A bunch of R-8 sounds with some tweaking. From the Future Music CD, Issue 56.
Audio Clip 2 - An ethnic demo that shows even the most complex ethnic rhythms are possible. From the Future Music CD, Issue 56.
Manual - Roland has made manuals for most of their products available as free PDF downloads.
- Specifications
- Polyphony - 32 voices
- Sounds - 68 Rom samples
- Controls - tune, decay, attack, nuance, output, etc...
- Patterns - 100
- Songs - 10
- Arpeg/Seq - Sequencer
- Keyboard - None
- Control - MIDI
- Date Produced - 1989
R-8 mkII - 1992
- Websites of Interest
- Resources & Credits
Images from Perfect Circuit Audio.
Errors or Corrections? Send them here.
Great machine! Still use it a LOT - especially with the brush card on board - Fantastic piece of kit.
I have the electronic (808) card, and I love the sounds. One criticism about this particular card is that the kick doesn't "punch" as hard as an original 808 would. But I really wouldn't sweat it because this criticism would only come from someone who actually had an original 808 and they would most likely be biased and not want to admit that you could get an equivalent sound out of a machine that didn't cost 1000+. Regardless, the electronic card is nice.
I want a dance card bad, but it seems as if no one has put any on ebay lately. The Jazz brush and Ethnic ROM cards top off the list of most popular ROMS for the machine.