SAY HELLO TO THE GRANDCHILD OF TRS-808. WELCOME HOME TR-8S
- Casa 35
- May 25, 2018
- 2 min read
Roland and its legendary TR sequencer series just got a new recruit and it's as powerful as its ancestors.
According to the deephouseamsterdam.com news, the original module ceased production in 1983 and will set you back upwards of £3,000 on eBay or similar, although digitized samples have been available for decades. It wasn’t until 2014 that Roland released the TR-8, an updated piece of hardware that threw in painstakingly accurate samples of the 808 and 909 for good measure. Now four years on, an upgrade has arrived in the form of the TR-8S, adding the ability to load your own samples and many more features besides. Point Blank managed to get their hands on the unit for this first look video with a live performer and Point Blank expert instructor Saytek, who teaches Electronic Music Performance as part of their BA (Hons) Degree programme.
Though it’s now synonymous with huge bottom-ended kicks and trap music, the Roland TR-808 was everywhere long before Kanye’s masterful eulogy in 2008. Pretty much since it was released, it’s been ever-present in music across the board. It’s on Soft Cell’s ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret‘, it’s on Afrika Bambaataa’s ‘Planet Rock‘ – it’s even on ‘Sexual Healing‘ by Marvin Gaye.e
Saytek’s demo starts off by showing some of the effects and live performance elements using a pattern he put together during his brief testing time with the unit. We learn that each sound now has its own fader now which opens up some exciting new performance possibilities, and you can drop effects at a local and global level. The SD card slot also means that importing sounds and samples are now a possibility for the first time, whilst extra outputs mean you can send different channels to different third-party units such as the SH-01 Boutique.
Saytek is all about the live performance, so it’s no surprise that he’s really into these new features – but the unit has also sacrificed none of its suitability for studio work, which is perhaps the biggest draw of all.
Check out his tutorial down below and you can read the original article on here.
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