Overview | Roland R-8 Human Rhythm Composer 

I had the R5, the cut down version of the R8 for years. Absolutely loved it, and even to this day I think the cymbal samples are better sounding than modern samples. I sometimes mix a VST drum kit with R8 cymbal samples, and it sounds great! A couple of the kick, snare and tom samples are still usable too, although many are terribly dated, of course!

Yes, I was a master user of this and a professional producer for rap labels in the 80's and 90's.. I used the R-8 and Roland Workstation.. I KILLED bear makers who used Akai MPC and SP 1200.. this machine made me different in sound!! I love it

Your videos are so well put together almost reminds me of the Bad Gear channel. I hope to see more videos in the future!

Punchy, warm and easy to sit in a mix.

Nice overview. R-8 certainly had it's own sound. Each sound had two samples (high & low) and cross-faded between them based on velocity curves, which along with variances in pitch, gave it a more 'real' sound. I still use a TD-7 in my rack, which uses the same architecture.

The End of an Era Drum Machine

You never forget hearing "Jungle" for the first time

in the electronic tribes of my generation knows it is the best in all senses, but not that affordable at that time. I had the "dark green" (first version) and the "black one" (mkII), and I confess that I use their samples even nowadays. Maschine from Native Instruments is the only software I think is likely R-8. I can control everything I used to do in the hardware of R-8, plus some more controls. and yes, R-8 by Roland IS A CLASSIC!

Thank you for uploading such a good information

Love this machine, especially the weird sounds one can achieve using the value slider to modify the pitch - instant Autechre vibes!

Slightly misleading: The R-8 is *not* able to "add a Groove to performances". The only real-time target parameters are (4:07) Velocity, Pitch, Decay, Nuance. The "Groove" is a source, not a target! It is actually a synced LFO (with fully editable steps) that is used to influence the target parameters. This seems to be often misunderstood.

i would love to see more r8 videos from you

For all the rage around the synths and beat machines of the 80ies, this masterpiece is often overseen and totally underrated. Perhaps it was released too late and could not win the battle against beats programmed on computers? At least not in the perception of many musicians and even gadget geeks of that time. Luckily, I purchased mine along with the most sought ROM cards in the early 2000s - at a ridiculously low price, when nobody wanted it. I just hope this beauty will stay alive for some more years.

I didn't know Friends theme used the R8 although I haven't heard it in a long time. I am seriously considering getting an R8 after watching other videos and comparing similar sounds in my other Roland sound modules. Another advantage with hardware is the sounds are all stored on a series of rom chips.

thank you for the video Espen. Maybe I am missing something very simple that is right in front of my eyes, but honestly I am a bit lost and could not find the answer in the manual so please bare with me as I'm an absolute beginner. In all of my other PCM drum machines, the samples can be navigated through and are ordered by instruments BD, SD, HH etc. so far so good with the R-8. now here's the rub. In all of my other drum machines the samples are also organized and can be navigated as whole kits that are pre mapped to the pads. What am I missing here? For example, if I want a kit from the 808 samples that are on the unit do I need to manually assign each sample to a pad? and then have only 5 combinations that can be saved? I'm pretty sure I'm missing something out here. I hope that the answer is simple and that browsing the samples as kits is easy, and that it is possible to navigate between those kits in one klick. Especially if I get the WAVEREX Rom expansion card for even more samples and going to load my own samples. Sorry if I am bothering you with something that is basic, I am sitting with the manual and still can't figure this out. Thanks a lot for reading, have a great day ❤

In 1991 i bought this R8, an man i spend hours with this machine, the Electronic romcard, oh boy, more hours, it’s sound digital dated but boy i had fun with it 😎

does the R5 feature the same pitch/decay control function also ?

Recently broke mine back out. Git both electronic and dance card plus sound efx

There's a video on YT from a guy that explains how to mod it with a built in 110-240V power supply Even worth the effort if you still have an original working external power brick

Does your R8 lags? mine was not really tight, sometimes too loose for recording it in some projects... R8M is much better in this regard, but damn it's not as easy and сool to edit sounds. It's tight as hell but the fun with programming sounds with slider was gone...

I owned the R8 back in the day. Nice box, but couldn't beat Alesis for sound quality.

You wouldn't happen to have a Roland D-110 that you can pair up with this, do you? I'm wondering if it's possible to make some sweet sweet synthwave by pairing the two. The D-110 is another piece of equipment that could benefit easy to follow videos like the ones you provide on your channel.

Nice video about such a cool instrument. So can a user store individual drum sounds onto those RAM cards, or they are only for MIDI settings and things like that?

Only talk but no demos to show how it feel human of the R-8? Baaahhh...