What's more, in an era of sometimes shoddy manufacturing and poor reliability, the FR1 was built like a tank, and also to last. Indeed, the FR1 is the precursor of all Roland's great analogue rhythm machines. What's more, four additional buttons allowed you to defeat the cymbal, claves, cowbell and bass-drum sounds, thus allowing you to modify the sound still further.īut perhaps most innovative of all were the FR1's sounds, now recognisable as archetypically 'Roland', and which were later destined to shape rock and pop music from the late '70s onwards. Long before rhythm machines became commonplace, it offered 16 preset patterns that you could mix together simply by pressing two buttons simultaneously, so more than one hundred rhythm combinations were just a button press (or two) away. It's hardly surprising that the FR1 was successful. But this is the story of a man as much as a company, so we'll start by turning our clock back to a time long before the birth of the hi-tech music.Īce Electronics' successful FR1 Rhythm Ace. Stan: "All right, but apart from the Jupiter 8, guitar synthesis, sample-based synthesizers, playable electronic drum kits, Boss effects units, programmable rhythm units, reliable analogue synthesizers, the Space Echoes and Jazz Chorus amplifiers, what have the Rolands ever done for us?"Ĭlearly, the Rolands have done a great deal for us, and it seems high time that we looked back at some of the milestones in the company's (and, therefore, the electronic music industry's) history. Let's face it, they were the only ones who could in the 1970s."
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and sample-based synthesis."Īctivist 4: "Yeah, yeah, that's something that we would really miss if the Rolands left."Īctivist 1: "And they made analogue synthesizers that were reliable!"Īctivist 3: "Yeah, they certainly know how to keep things working. But apart from the Jupiter 8, the Space Echo, and programmable rhythm units?"Īctivist 4: "Playable electronic drum kits?" Obviously programmable rhythm units, programmable rhythm units go without saying, don't they. Stan: "Yeah, all right, I'll grant you that the Jupiter 8 and the Space Echo are two things the Rolands have done."Īctivist 3: "And programmable rhythm units."
remember what echo units used to be like?" they did give us that, that's true."Īctivist 1: "Oh yeah, the Space Echo. The Judean Peoples' Front (or was it the Peoples' Front of Judea?) might well have replied as follows. I think that it was one of the staff who wrote for Roland's in-house magazine in the 1980s who first posed the question, "What have the Rolands ever done for us?", with apologies to John Cleese. As founder Ikutaro Kakehashi approaches his 75th birthday, we begin a journey through the company's extraordinary history. The Roland name is almost synonymous with music technology - there can't be an SOS reader who hasn't made use of their instruments at some time. Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland, at the 1964 NAMM show with the Ace Electronics R1 and Canary.
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