A Brief History of Roland Drum Synthesis
A Brief History of Roland Drum Synthesis With the launch of the Roland TR-1000 I became more interested in something lurking in my TR-6S. The Roland TR-8S and TR-6S have a powerful FM Synthesis sound engine that brings a whole universe of sonic textures to the modern drum machine classic https://articles.roland.com/roland-engineering-morph-fm-synthesis/ Machines & Synthesizers The inclusion of the FM sound engine in their current TR drum machine line returns to an idea Roland had when first thinking about the TR-808 - the drum synthesizer. In the mid-1970s drummers had been catered for by companies like Pollard, Simmons and Pearl with devices that would play synthesiser sounds when hitting the skins of specially adapted drums. These were analogue synthesizers which allowed the drummer to tweak various parameters to get all manner of sensible and silly sounds. In the era of space-disco and synth-pop this was a symbiotic relationship with technolog...