How did people do rolls/re-triggers with early drum machines?

[mholloway]

This is just more out of curiosity, since with current DAWs / beatboxes it's easy as pie to achieve these kind of effects.

But I've been messing around a lot with Nithonat from d16, their 606 emulation. They go in for the whole "literal recreation" thing, which has got me wondering -- the IDM guys in the 80s / 90s using these things, how did they achieve those slick hi-hat rolls? (I see different names for this, such as retrigger, etc, but you know what I mean: when the hat suddenly plays back rapidly in 32nd or 64th notes over the course of a beat or two, then goes back to normal).

As far as I can tell, the 606 (and the 808 for that matter) had no such functionality. The effect is all over the 606 drums from Autechre on Incunabula and Amber, and they were recording to tape and DAT....is there some way to 'hack' the 606 that makes the roll / retrigger effect possible?

Very curious to know! (and also curious if there's a way to make Nithonat do it, too, though I'm well aware I can easily achieve the effect with any number of other processes in my DAW, or with Geist, Maschine, etc....)

-Michael

[pheeleep]

The MPC 2000 has a Tap Tempo Note Repeat button. You hold it down while touching one of the drum pads and the sound on the pad retriggers according to how you set up the repeat button to trigger, as you described. They were probably sampling those drum machines.

[cron]

A lot of the fast or accelerating/decelerating drum rolls were done by moving the loop points in a sampler back then AFAIK. Whether that's what Autechre did on those particular records I don't know, but sampling your drum sounds out then messing with the loop points during sample playback was a fairly common technique in IDM circles.

[justin3am]

Looping delays, sampler tricks and sequencers with high enough resolution. I don't have knowledge of the recording sessions in question but there was gear that could do that kinda stuff in the late 80's and early 90's. It just took more work. I mean, I was 7 in 1990 but I know from using that type of gear more recently.

With the 606 or 808, they may have been playing with the scale control or running the sequencer at a higher tempo than the rhythm implies, so consecutive 16th notes sound like 32nd/64th notes. In some tracks it sounds like tempo synced delays (though the "sync" would need to be done by ear).

[Teksonik]

My Roland R-5 from that period has Roll and Flam buttons. I don't use it anymore.

[beely]

I programmed them, mostly Atari + Creator/Notator then Logic.

Much as now...

Have fondish memories of slaving over programming detailed natural sounding drum tracks with Creator's/Logic's Hyper Edit...

[W23]

I was under the impression that most of the glitchy repeat stuff was programmed in a tracker environment which controlled some akai sampler or another, with the drum machine (and other) sounds via midi.

[Richard deHove]

I used to use a Sequential Circuits "Tom" drum machine. Brilliant machine (but very suseptible to static!). Just run it real time, set the quantize to whatever you wanted and press and hold to record the roll

[Dasheesh]

In the 80's it was a lot of experimentation including tape, but there was a "flam" button on a lot of machines. A lot of times you improvised with what ever you had. In the 90's a lot of guys were starting to turn to software. The atari computers were popular for a short time, but by the later half of the decade C sound, and then MAX msp was what the IDM guys were experimenting with. reaktor was in full swing by the time 2000 rolled around.

[Richard deHove]

I also remember on the Drumulator that you could turn off the quantize - then it was a matter of just trying to hit exactly the right spot. Lots of trial and error to get the right feel.

[deastman]

On my Alesia HR-16 and my friend's Kawai R-100, we would just drum the parts in live, changing the quantization to 24ths or 32nds to play in those short fills. I'd loop record over the same spot a few times, frantically pounding on the pad with both hands as fast as I could, until I had what I wanted.

[Googly Smythe]

I think it was 1985 that I bought a Yamaha RX 15, and a few months later a Yamaha QX5 - £900 at 1980's prices!
For drum rolls you'd just set the quantize to 32/64 depending on the tempo and insert the notes in the step editor. Fun times!

[risome]

You programmed the pattern and used velocity and accent.

[ghettosynth]

As far as I can tell, the 606 (and the 808 for that matter) had no such functionality. The effect is all over the 606 drums from Autechre on Incunabula and Amber, and they were recording to tape and DAT....is there some way to 'hack' the 606 that makes the roll / retrigger effect possible?

Don't assume that just because they were recording to 2-track that they were necessarily using the sequencers in the original drum machines. Individual trigger input mods, and even midi conversions were VERY common back then.

Also, there are hardware techniques that also work with the very simple sync methods of the 808/606 that would allow you to quickly double or half the playback speed.

That said, whoever said it in the thread, modulating the loop start point was a very common technique.

[Synthman2000]

Before MIDI which is what I think the TR-606 is/was you had to control things using CV Gate.. which was essentially a trigger voltage going down and cable. I used to control an SH-101 using the CV Gate of a first release Novation bass station rack (which was an extremely handy facility it had a MIDI to CV Gate converter)

As far as actual triggering pre MIDI..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CV/gate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MC-8_Microcomposer