I don't know if the original had MIDI, therefore it didn't have MIDI configurations, only trigger settings. The one that had Midi configured was the TR-909, which was the first drum machine with Midi and later the TR-606 also arrived with the same Midi implementation. The Rd8 kick drum can be played like a chromatic bass, the configuration comes in the manual and is one of the great features for people who make drum and bass, Trap, dubstep music.
Hi @inperfectsequence7840 No the Roland TR-808 was released before the MIDI standard was ratified by the vendors. From launch to being discontinued Roland considered the instrument to be a commercial flop. Which meant that they could be acquired by the new dance orientated music scene cheaply with many units being retrofitted with MIDI in the ensuring years to allow producers to control them from sequencers. At the point of release the the Roland TR-808 had a DIN Sync that could be operated in an In or Out mode and this allowed an external time signature to be received by the unit. The unit also had triggers OUT for controlling other instruments but that was it. As you state the Roland TR-909 coming after the MIDI standard had been agreed had basic MIDI functions built in. By the way this unit was also considered a commercial flop by Roland. The question is without the Roland TR-808 and Roland TR-909 would many of the classic dance tunes have existed? Jon
@@TheMusicTechGuyUK If there are many things written and edited in independent and official press, entire books about how everything happened, but they do not coincide with things as they actually happened, many give data from the point of view of the mainstream world of the 80s and 90s, but in the underground we live everything very differently. Starting from the fact that the commercial failure was not Roland's fault, it was not that simple, there were more things added in a time of many changes, it was more due to the bad press and the bad promotion along with many more things that ruined these machines. Roland only made a CR78 have controls and be easy to operate with the sequencer, this revolutionized everything, Soul II soul with its "back to live" or Adamsky already used these, although their success was slow, in Belgium, Holland and Germany the 909 was the king, they gave birth to EBM and other things with this machine that later ended up in eurodance, German techno, trance... progressive, minimal, monotone, hard core techno, gabba... The failure was also with the TB303 and TR606, people complaining that they were made of plastic and bad things with very ugly sounds where the guitarists hated and felt wrongly cheated in the same way, when in Chicago they used them for techno and underground. the time, where styles like Acid house emerged, although before House there was Jackin and things that were not known by the names or labels of today, not even EDM was a nickname or a cliche, that's more of this century. In the 20th century the music business worked differently depending on styles and subgenres, dance music could be anything for dancing, but everyone knew it was commercial disco stuff with 909, nothing to do with music. funk, disco or steet-music. If you said "Dance", you were the rare one with commercial tastes. In Chicago we were more distrustful of the public opinion press and many of us bought these machines on the second-hand market and there was a lot of house music in those years with 808+909, hip-house was also another big trend from 88 to 93, used machines They were at candy prices, but fashion made that end soon, the TB303 were the volcas of the 80s, (a Sony Walkman was more expensive than this thing), but they rose in price. So 808 never had midi, the rest later did. The problem with the commercial failure was that for people in the pop world, 808 seemed very cold and very dry, unusable, but then there were people who used much worse things, from there comes the unjustified campaign against these rhythm machines, which do not They were nothing further than the same CR things improved and with more control. But they were defeated and the result was the poor sale and failure that Roland announced. The funniest thing is that in the 90s it wasn't better, no one could have something like that and they became expensive, because they were already very expensive objects of desire, used and old things at professional prices and more expensive than a JD-800 in 1993 , and digital samplers were in fashion, things like Ensoniq ASR-10, Akai S-950, SP1200, Roland W-30, Yamaha SU700 in 1998 were the expensive machines, with these machines many used sound libraries from the 909 and 808 buying cd-rooms for more experimental and cheap use. (obviously it is always cheaper to buy a CD than hardware in 1993). I remember that in some magazines they gave away floppy disks and later audio CDs with these sounds. Many people preferred to have this so they could better manipulate sounds that they couldn't manipulate in the same way on an original machine. And the cheapest hardware samplers were not that expensive. Being able to use the 16 sounds of the 808 when you couldn't with the original made a big change. The DMC world sample libraries on CDs and vinyls, Zero-G, EastWest, Best service, made the most famous sounds of the 10 years after 1990. Also these sounds were in workstadions like Korg M1, T1, arrangers, other Akai digital drum machines... These things were more profitable for the majority and whoever had an 808 or 909 was a privileged person or simply a professional guy with good current account. The rest compared a sampler with CDs from libraries that came in the box with all the trendy sounds and that was the cheapest way to have a good option of making rhythms. Nobody had an 808 or 909, everyone used samples for their trance hits, eurodance, UK garage... Things like Technotronic never had these drum machines, all they had was a DX7, an Atari ST1040 and an Akai S-1000, The rest was all professional studio work, and the Belgian Jo Bagaert makes it clear in his interviews, everything was difficult to buy new things and his equipment was second-hand, for bad 12-bit sound. Those CDs from Akai libraries, Roland, E-mu, Yamaha, were to blame for the fame that Roland things have. Greetings and thanks for the video.
Hi @inperfectsequence7840 Thanks for the very comprehensive response, I enjoyed reading this. I agree the commercial failing from many of these instruments was Roland failure to recognise the market that would be consuming them. I think the issue with these machines was how the sound was generated. If we took a step back a few years the sound was a sample on an EPROM. Where as the Roland TR-808 generated the tone based on the electronic components inside the machine and this didn’t resonate with mainstream. But did with the other musical styles that liked this dryer. colder, synthetic sound. And as these machines became vogue and samples were used to emulate the sound, as I have said you can only manipulate a sample so far. If you want to change the base tone of the sample, you were resampling the instrument. But for many a sample of was all they wanted for the onward processing. Jon
Awesome, thank you for this. I've got several options with the RD8. I can sync via MIDI with my DAW as master and the RD8 as slave, I can also connect my TR707 via sync to the RD8 and now via keyboard with the RD8 effectively as a sound module to my DAW. The thing I'd like to know is how can I use the swing/shuffle function and record that into my DAW using the RD8 as slave to the DAW? or should I just use this method to record patterns in via MIDI and Audio and quantize the MIDI info then just record the audio from the RD8 into the DAW? I make House music so the swing is pretty important... In an ideal world I'd love to just record the swung patterns from the RD8 into the DAW with the DAW as master clock but I can't seem to access the shuffle when thee RD8 is in slave mode to the DAW via MIDI. Channel ten was purely for General Midi drums. :)
Hi @Roollight00 What a fab comment and question. The first thing I’ll say is think about the the clock source. I would personally say that if you are recording in your DAW the DAW should be the clock source that all your other instruments take time from. This allows you to vary the time code in the DAW and the other instruments to react. Having said this there may be reasons why you might clock to a drum machine or other source. Now to swing. Which is a really interesting question. And I stand to be corrected by someone else as I can’t test this at the moment. But my understanding is that the RD8 transmits the notes that correspond to the parts of the kit being played in normal time and does not transmit the swing. Swing is an effect that the RD8 adds to the instrument in real time. I seem to recall that there was an issue in earlier firmware versions where if you were using swing it changed the MIDI timing. But this has since been addressed. Of course you can record the audio from the RD8 and the audio will include the swing setting. Anyone else able to comment on this question? Jon
@@TheMusicTechGuyUK Hi Jon, firstly I should have said I'm using and out of date version of Logic (8) however it still syncs to the RD8 ok via MMC/MIDI, and although timing isn't rock solid it's almost there and I can adjust the audio once recorded by just shifting the track left or right to get it spot on. The major plus is that while synced to Logic the RD doesn't drift over time which means the whole track is in time! not bad for an ancient version of Logic running through an old midiman 4x4 USB MIDI interface. I completely forgot the audio record live option from the RD8, the only problem is that it wouldn't be synced to anything which is going to cause issues. the other issue I have is that I only have two audio inputs as I'm using an Apogee Duet (the old version) which means I have to track the 11 individual outs, two at a time from the RD8 if I want to process each individual track to form a group of tracks for a buss (I know my kit is well out of date however it works OK so I've never had reason to upgrade although I don't have the funds to do so at the moment) it looks like the quantize option might be the way forward as I can record the MIDI output from the RD8 back into logic, quantize the MIDI notes with the Logic's swing patterns and then record the audio either individual outs or the main out while still synced to Logic keeping everything in time. I can then layer with my 707 and ive got a 606 as well although that's alittle trickier to sync as it's clock/DIN only so I slave that to the TR707....... Convoluted yes, impossible no. I does make life a lot harder as I know newer versions of Logic and audio inputs can handle multiple audio inputs and I'm limited to two channels but that's how it is for now, so its a case of me finding a work around that does the job. I also just realised that the RD8 has USB output, I've never tried this, does it output audio over multiple channels over USB? (perhaps I should read the manual for that! :) I really appreciate your reply, thanks Jon it's given me a bit to consider. I need to check up about the USB connection though as that might also be another way forward rather than just relying on audio and having to faff about aligning everything up track by track (although I'm equally happy doing that process) Who knew that getting that authentic House music swing would be such a challenge with an RD8!!
Hi @Roollight00 There are two rules with studio setup. 1. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it 2. Refer to rule 1 Recording instruments can be challenging so removing many points of failure reduces the issues in the recording chain. As you state you do have the audio over USB. The Behringer RD-8 will present a channel for each instrument to the computer over USB. So you can record each instrument on a separate track. This may well aid in your Apogee setup allowing those channels to be used for other instruments. And to be honest most creators do not need the facilities offered by the latest DAW. In my case I use the sequencer and could get by when roughing out thins with the simple features offered to me by the sequencer on the CX5M. Jon
This is why I'm here. Disappointing. I guess I have to do it in my Daw with the push. I bought this to avoid that... How can you do it with the Rd8? Record each tone as a sample and arrange it later I guess?
@Shawn Curran. Hi Shawn. I haven't had time to go back and see if it was written into the original MIDI 1.0 standard or something the musician world came up with as best practice! Jon
It’s to do with the general midi standard GM. If you wanted your module to be GM compatible and able to play back general midi files, it would need the drums on channel 10. This is also the reason the mapping is standard. Clap is d#. Closed hi hat is f#. They are following the General Midi standard.
Hi @Mike Edwards Thanks for saving me the effort of looking this up. I was trying to remember whether specific channels were actually enshrined in the standard or whether this was just industry convention. But as you point out it is actually built into the standard for cross device compatibility. For those that follow this thread and want to read the actual standards they can be found at: www.midi.org Jon
