Inside track

What made the 808 and 909 kick sounds so distinctive? Roland’s engineering team give us some insight…

: What can you tell us about the 808 and 909’s original analogue circuits?

“The TR-808’s kick drum sound is made using a resonating trigger pulse, similar in behaviour to the way that a drum head vibrates when hit. When a drum head is hit multiple times in succession, even using the same force, the way the sound resonates will change depending on the state of vibration from the drum head. The same is true with the TR-808 kick sound. The way it sounds changes by adding trigger pulses in at any given resonant state.

“The TR-909’s kick drum sound, on the other hand, is composed of multiple circuits such as Enveloper, VCO, VCA, etc, like on analogue synthesisers. The initial attack portion of any percussive sound is, of course, very important. In the TR-909, by creating separate circuits for the attack and resonant portions of the sound, we were able to realise the more natural behaviour of a drum.

“It is due to these two design philosophies that the different kick drum sounds were born.”

: What were the challenges of recreating the 808 and 909 kicks using ACB?

“As you know, original TR-808 and TR-909 units can sound quite different from one another. No two 808s or 909s will sound exactly the same. So, when developing our Analog Circuit Behavior technology (ACB) for the latest TR series, we recreated what Roland believe to be the ideal TR-808 and TR-909 sounds using a high level of technical knowledge and, of course, the ears of our engineers.”