Analogue magic
The first commercial drum machines were all-analogue. Take a look at those early boxes – like the Roland CR-78 from 1978 or the PAiA Programmable Drum Set from 1975 – and you’ll see that they generated sounds using fairly simple electronic circuits. Most of the classic 80s drum machines used little more than a basic analogue synth circuit for each voice, one handling each particular drum sound.
In exactly the same way that synths sound different to each other, subtle differences in circuits and components define the sonic characteristics of analogue drum machines. The most obvious example might be the Roland TR-808 and TR-909: two flagship drum machines from the same company, released just three years apart, each with distinctive kick drum sounds that could never be mistaken for the other.
Many of the classic analogue drum machines remain popular to this day, but very few offer anything like the level of programming versatility we expect now. Look at an original, unmodified TR-808, for example, and you’ll see knobs to control the level, tone and decay of the bass drum – but nothing more.
Modern analogue drum machines offer many more adjustable parameters than their vintage cousins. Hardware units such as the DSI Tempest and Elektron Analog RYTM rely on analogue circuits for their kick drum sounds, but are much more versatile than older machines. Even the humble Korg Volca Beats offers a pitch control on its kick circuit.
As a result of their increased complexity and versatility, modern analogue drum machines are capable of a broader range of tones than you could ever coax out of a 70s or 80s equivalent, no matter how much you tweaked its parameters. The Tempest, for instance, can do convincing impressions of an 808 or 909 kick, plus lots more. That makes contemporary kick drums less distinctive – you can spot an 808 kick on a track, but maybe not that of the Analog RYTM. The good news for those on a limited budget or a distaste for hardware is that almost all the same kick sounds are achievable using affordable drum plugins. Software like Sonic Charge’s MicroTonic will do analogue kick sounds nearly as well as any hardware you can name, at a fraction of the cost of a temperamental classic.