Digital love
Digital technology is so completely ingrained in modern society that it’s easy to forget what a relatively recent phenomenon it is. Digital audio only really kicked off commercially in the early 80s with the introduction of synths like the Yamaha DX7, early samplers and the first digital drum machines. The very first out of the blocks was Roger Linn’s pioneering LM-1 Drum Computer, which used samples of a real drummer, allowing it to sound far more realistic than the analogue drum machines of the day.
The LM-1 was staggeringly expensive by anyone’s standards, retailing for $5500 in 1980 (nearly $17,000 in today’s money). As a result, it was largely the preserve of wealthy musicians like Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder and Prince, the last of whom fell in love with it and used it extensively throughout his career.
Cheaper sample-based drum machines followed, including Linn’s own LinnDrum and rival efforts in the form of the E-MU Drumulator, Oberheim DX and more. Meanwhile, as sampling technology began to take off, musicians realised the potential of sampling and manipulating live drum sounds. You can’t discuss 80s drums without acknowledging the dominance of sampled hits, whether they come from a rackmount sampler, one of Akai’s MPC Xfer Nerve is a drum synthesis powerhouse workstations (co-developed by Roger Linn) or more expensive keyboard samplers such as Fairlights and E-MU Emulators.
The next major breakthrough came with the introduction of real-time digital synthesis of drums, initially in quite primitive form but taken to altogether new levels in the early 2000s with the introduction of Elektron’s Machinedrum, which pushed the limits of digital drum synthesis. Real-time digital synthesis wasn’t really an option until recently, but these days you can pick up a perfectly capable machine for £85 in the form of Teenage Engineering’s PO-32 Pocket Operator, which also ties in cleverly with Sonic Charge’s MicroTonic plugin.
As you’d expect, various modern instruments build on the legacy of digital drum machine hardware. If you want classic digital sounds then the obvious starting point is to look for sample packs, but you can go even further with contemporary drum plugins. FXpansion Geist2 and Xfer Nerve both lean further toward the sample-based side of things, but their sonic potential is huge once you start digging into the digital synthesis options onboard.
COMPUTER MUSIC