Linn LM-1 lands at Cantos

And with a mighty THUD I might add! Many thanks to Doug Berquist who made this generous donation to us. The LM-1 is an important milestone in drum machine technology, being the first device of its kind to incorporate samples of real drums, rather than making close approximations using synthesizer techniques, as was the case for the now legendary Roland TR-808. Everyone has heard of the 808, it has even been mentioned in lyrics of pop songs, immortalized on album covers and in music videos, and the sounds are still used today either in the flesh or as samples. In fact the 808 and the LM-1 came out around the same time. Although the 808 had a unique and easy to use programming interface (commonly called XOX style programming), it didn’t really sound like real drums.  Roger Linn was a guitar player in California in the late 70s when he decided to build a drum machine that in his words “did more than play preset samba patterns and didn’t sound like crickets” which admittedly most of them did at the time. The home computer boom was just around the corner, and the technology to make his vision of “sampled” drums possible was starting to become more widely available. The heart of the machine (and other machines made by Oberheim and Sequential Circuits in the early 80s) is the EPROM. (Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) These have since been rendered almost obsolete by newer technology, but in 1978 were cutting edge. Essentialy it’s a chip that can be semi-permanently programmed with data, in this case a drum sound, and if so desired erased and re-programmed with a different sound. (See the blog about the Prommer and Oberheim DX)
So why is this dinosaur of a drum machine still relevant in this age of massive multi-samples and seemingly unlimited memory? Well, for one thing this revolutionary device showed up on lots of famous recordings by Prince, Michael Jackson (Thriller!), Madonna, The Human League, Mtume and many others. Its sound embodies the early 80s. Personally, I think it has a really unique feel. I own an Oberheim DX, and it sounds very quantized and robotic compared to the “sloppy yet funky” sound the LM-1 has.  The song “Juicy Fruit” by Mtume is a prime example of LM-1 at its finest.  That beat has been sampled to death, most notably by Biggy Smalls for the song “Juicy”.   I like Mtume’s version better though ; )