Before Roland’s new TR-8 Rhythm Performer, a modern drum machine, was unveiled this year, the company released a series of promotional videos in which the machine’s designers sought out the original schematics and behavior of the TR-808, its predecessor, an iconic analog drum machine from the early 1980s. The TR-808 holds a cultural cache, most recently due to its use by Outkast, Baauer, and Kanye West, that Roland is interested in exploiting for the Rhythm Performer. The video features engineers closely examining the TR-808’s sound with an oscilloscope, trying to glean every last detail of the original’s personality.
“Roland TR-808″ by Flickr user Ethan Hein, CC BY 2.0
Things were not always this way; when released, the TR-808 was widely dismissed as a musical instrument. Because it did not sound like “normal” acoustic drums, its utility was questioned by well known musicians, who ultimately disregarded it. Its “cheap,” circuit-produced sounds became bargain-bin treasures for emerging artists. Since its sounds now play such a large part in the landscape of electronic music, this essay takes a historical perspective on the TR-808 Rhythm Composer’s use and circulation. By analyzing how both Marvin Gaye and Juan Atkins used the TR-808 in the early 1980s, I show how the TR-808 created a sonic space for drum machines in popular music, and consider the cultural ramifications therein.
Drum machines, though commonplace today, were once seen as kitschy tools for amateur musicians on a budget. As audio engineer Mitchell Sigman explains, the 808’s low, subsonic kick drum and “tick” snare characterized a departure from the realistic, sampled drum sounds that high-end drum machines in the early 1980s produced. The 808 uses analog oscillators and white noise generators to make sounds that resemble the components of a drum set (kick, snare, hi-hats, etc.) And, although these sounds are commonplace now, they are used because they sound robotic and not because they sound like drums. The noises of the 808, which can be seen as failed imitations of real drums, did not achieve notoriety until their adoption by artists like Juan Atkins, who began as culturally marginal, but later became mainstream. But it was the comparatively low cost of the 808, which originally retailed around $1,195, that attracted musicians who were unable to afford other similar machines like the LinnDrum,that retailed at more than twice that price. Roland advertised the machine as a “studio” for musicians on a budget. After its release, the 808 was almost completely forgotten by Roland, as testified by the company’s decision to invest in marketing and research for other products.
“Industrial Records Studio 1980″ by Flickr user Chris Carter, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Although the machine failed to achieve market success, its accessibility as an affordable rhythm alternative led to its adoption by musicians on a budget in underground scenes. In Detroit, artists like Juan Atkins were experimenting with the machine’s sonic capabilities in 1981, while other artists like Afrika Bambaataa were also using it in the Bronx as early as 1982.
The public’s first exposure to the 808 came in 1982 with Juan Atkins’ “Clear” and Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” These tracks both illuminate the key draws that each musician saw in the 808. For Gaye, it was a departure from his body of Motown work; for Atkins, the machine was something he felt could embody his early career. Although it meant different sorts of experimentation for the two, the new sorts of sounds the machine produced allowed them both to explore new possibilities for musical meaning. Atkins’ use of the 808 represents a pivotal moment in the American musical landscape, in which the futurism of the sound of synthesizers in rock echoed other segments of the nation’s sonic imagination. Just as Trevor Pinch mentions in Analog Days that synthesizers required validation by experimenting musicians like Geoff Downes and Keith Emerson a decade before, the 808 broke into the mainstream through a back door.
Juan Atkins
In the early ‘80s, Juan Atkins was learning all he could about electronic music. As an able musician and the son of a concert promoter, Atkins was poised to couple his musical knowledge with a new breed of electronic musical instruments, like the 808. Together with a tightly knit group of people from Detroit, Atkins succeeded in promoting techno from a subculture to part of a global dance music scene. According to Atkins, the popularity of Detroit Techno came from its adoption in European urban centers like London and Berlin, which lent the music additional meaning stateside. In an interview with Dollop UK, Atkins emphasizes that the 808 was central to this musical development, as he calls the 808 (among other machines) “the foundation[s] of electronic dance music.”
“Cybotron-Clear” by Flickr user Alan Read, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Under the moniker of Cybotron, Atkins released the song “Clear,” which predominantly features the TR-808 and other synthesized instruments. “Clear”’s proto-techno soundscape pushes the 808 prominently to the front of this mix, and provides the track’s backbone throughout its duration. The solid, resonant kick, swishy open high hat, and the piercing snare all are in your face, causing all other sounds to appear behind the 808. It doesn’t waver in time. Its sounds are decidedly machinic and void of the “feeling” that a good human drummer always has. This departed from most rhythmic trends in popular music to date, since, as music scholar John Mowitt points out, a sense of “human feeling” comes hand-in-hand with drumming.
Atkins embraced these machine sounds and considered the 808 his “secret weapon.” Its ability to be programmed, manipulated, and warped on the fly lent it to a very particular kind of performance and music making that Atkins was among the first to embrace. Rather than rely on the breaks that DJs could find on records, the 808 allowed for Atkins to create beats to his own liking, placing kick, snare, and hi-hat hits where he found to be effective. In this flexibility, the kitsch of the 808s sounds was the empowering difference between his music and what other artists were creating. This is especially true of Clear, where the breaks produced by the 808 were impossible to find on vinyl.
“Juan Atkins” by Flickr user Rene Passet, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
As Bleep43, an online EDM collective, notes, Atkins’ vision for electronic music would eventually pick up in London, where he relocated in the late eighties. Although Detroit Techno had achieved regional success at home, record sales and performance dates in London signaled that techno had found a larger audience abroad. Although he considers himself an eclectically “Detroit” artist (he commonly mentions this in interviews cited thus far), he both sees the impact of his work globally, and thinks of the modern Berlin flavor of minimal techno as a notably clever offshoot. Just as “the Frankfurt School” or “Delta Blues” have both a geographic identity and a divorce from that very place, Detroit Techno was born and incubated in the city and has since made a global migration. And just like mechanized assembly line automotive industry that made Detroit famous, the machinic techno sounds of the 808 have forever left their mark on the global electronic music scene.
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye’s struggle with depression, drug use and pornography (as seen in People Magazine’s expose on Gaye) were the context for the subtle and understated rhythmic backing the 808 provided in Sexual Healing. He used the 808 as a tool of texture and punctuation. Gaye’s use of the 808 in “Sexual Healing” differs vastly from Watkins’ in “Clear,” from noticeable timbric changes to the clever placement of all its sounds including handclaps and clave in the composition.
“Synths of Yesteryear 5/5″ by Flickr user Jochen Wolters, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The drum machine’s prevalence in “Sexual Healing” shows how culturally marginal sounds can move into the mainstream. Gaye and his producers, already squarely in the center of popular American music, co-opt the sound of the 808 not in an attempt to break through, but rather to exercise flexibility within the mainstream. Since he was already an extremely successful pop artist, Gaye’s use of the 808 marks him as a sonic risk-taker and innovator, weaving the machine sounds of the 808 seamlessly into the most unlikely of genres, soul. While Gaye recovered from drug addiction and depression in Belgium, Colombia Records sent him an 808 because it was more portable than a studio drummer. It also offered sonic capabilities that would have been new to Gaye’s ears: the handclaps, hi-hats, and clave sounds of the 808. The pairing of these new sounds with the insight the lyrics offer give us another perspective on how this drum machine shaped popular American music.
Punctuating the beat precisely, the 808 offers a subtlety that locks intricately with the other instruments in a composition. The repetition created by the 808’s various elements allow for Gaye’s incredibly personal message to be heard more transparently, foregrounding it against a somewhat predictable and machinic background. A clear departure from his early work, the 808’s presence in “Sexual Healing” marked a conscious change of musical direction for Gaye.
The machine’s normally powerful snare is invoked only at the quietest of velocities, often being replaced by the now iconic handclap. Unlike many contexts in which the 808 is heard such as “Clear” and Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock,” “Sexual Healing“ manages to keep everything low key. Matching the lyrics that espouse peace, harmony, and sense of internal struggle (Whenever blue tear drops are falling/And my emotional stability is leaving me/Honey I know you’ll be there to relieve me/The love you give to me will free me), Gaye uses the 808 to evoke a surprisingly contemplative and serene atmosphere. It is this use that best shows the machine’s strange versatility, as both a harbinger of radically innovative musical genres and it’s ability to produce tranquil rhythmic textures for popular music.
Transformation
“Roland TR 909 Drum Machine Classic” by Flickr user Juliana Luz, CC BY-NC 2.0
Although Atkins and Gaye exemplify the TR-808’s early adoption, a slow road toward mainstream popularity remained because of the more realistic sounds of sampled drums that Roger Linn included in his high-end machines. The LM-1 and its successors (famous for hit singles like Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”, Hall and Oate’s “Maneater,” and Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry”) made sampled drums the gold standard of computerized rhythmic backing. In fact, Roland’s next drum machine, the TR-909, implemented samples alongside synthesis to create more realistic sounds. As a result, 808s couldn’t be given away until culturally marginal musical actors gave its sounds gravitas (Sigman, 2011, 46). These players and genres slowly gravitated into the mainstream as hip-hop and techno gained more of a foothold in the body of American popular music. The shift from seeing its sounds as trashy and undesirable to ostensibly hip signifies a culturally important moment within the history of music technology. As shown in the examples above, subtle moments of economic, emotional, and geographic necessity seeded the popular music industry for the eventual boom of the 808 today. When techno eventually broke through to the mainstream, the 808 was so fundamental to the canon of the genre that it has managed to maintain a place of importance for musicians and producers. What once sounded tinny and synthetic gained cultural significance through the innovation of Atkins and others, and thereby became a hidden driver within techno and its offshoots.
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Ian Dunham is a musician and music scholar originally from northeast Ohio. He earned a B.S. from Middle Tennessee State University in the Recording Industry within the College of Mass Communications, and then worked as a recording engineer in Nashville and Germany. Afterward, he earned an M.M. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin, where he also operated a home recording studio. He will start a PhD in Media Studies at Rutgers in the fall, where he will pursue research related to music and copyright.
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Featured image: “1980 Roland TR-808” by Flickr user Joseph Holmes, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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Filed under: Acoustics, Aesthetics, Article, Cultural Studies, Digital Media, History, Listening, Music, Recording, Sound, Sound Studies, Synthesizers, Technology Tagged: Afrika Bambaataa, Analog Days, Baauer, Billy Idol, Bleep43, Clear, Columbia Records, Cybotron, Detroit techno, Dirty Laundry, Don Henley, drum machine, EDM, ethnomusicology, Geoff Downes, Hall and Oates, Ian Dunham, John Mowitt, Juan Atkins, Kanye West, Keith Emerson, LinnDrum, LM-1, Maneater, Marvin Gaye, Mitchell Sigman, OutKast, People Magazine, Roger Linn, Roland, Sexual Healing, synthesis, TR-8, TR-808, TR-909, Trevor Pinch, White Wedding