It is one of the recognisable musical
instruments ever made, having featured on songs by everyone from Marvin Gaye to
Duran Duran. It is even credited by many as spawning
electronic dance music.However, one enterprising fan of Roland's
TR808 drum machine has decided to make the electronic gadget real - by
recreating it using real instruments in his living room.
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Moritz Simon Geist with his creation, a giant drum machine
using actual drums to recreate the iconic Roland TR-808
THE ROLAND TR-808
The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer was one of
the first programmable drum machines and was introduced by the Roland
Corporation in early 1980.
The first band to use the TR-808 was the
Japanese electronic music group Yellow Magic Orchestra, although it hit the
mainstream in 1982, with the release of the mainstream American hits 'Sexual
Healing' by Marvin Gaye and 'Planet Rock' by Afrika Bambaataa. It is still used in drum and bass, hip hop,
R&B, house, electro, and many forms of electronic dance
music. The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, known as
the 808, was one of the first programmable drum machines, and the most
recognisable. Released in 1980, it has been used in a string
of hits in the 1980s by everyone from dance and hip hop bands to Madonna.
'MR-808 is the first drum robot that
reproduces the drum sounds of the 80s - in the real world,' said Moritz Simon Geist, who built the
machine. 'I have been playing electronic music for
several years now, and at some place I was bored of the electronic music
production process. 'So I decided to go back to the roots of sound
generation – the physical sound generation – but combine it with the electronic
music structure we like so much. 'I liked the idea so much, that I couldn’t
stop building my own drum robots, and ended up replacing all the electronic
sounds of a whole drum computer.'
However, unlike the original, the robot 808
doesn't always sound the same, and was designed to sound more
'real'. 'I like the idea of introducing more 'error'
into the music,' said Geist. 'A drum beaten by a mechanic robot arm can
never be as predictable as a computer generated sound. 'Consequently, the mechanic character of the
installation MR-808 introduces fallibility into the
performance.'
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