Roland TR-8S

Introduction

Today I wanted to talk about the Roland TR-8S, a drum machine that we have had for around six months, that some of you may have seen us use in our Hive Open Mic videos (@hiveopenmic). It is a digital drum machine and step sequencer in the classic x0x style.

https://www.roland.com/global/products/tr-8s/

It has samples of all the classic Roland drum machines, 808, 909, 626, and 505, as well as numerous other sample-based kits. You will never run out of sound options with this beast. As you can see from the picture, the layout is acessible and easy to use, with most functions just a button push away. Deeper features are available with dextrous multi-button combos, but unfortunately the manual is classic Roland, ie completely useless, so you have to turn to the interweb for those "special moves".
Steps can be programmed in, or played live, although there is no unquantized recording, like you get with elektron boxes, which is a little disappointing.
Each drum can have it's own physical output, or you can stream everything individually over USB. We tend to just use a stereo pair on our live performances, but we go multichannel when writing and recording.
There are three master FX - a delay, a reverb, and a user selectable multi-fx, which has everything from choruses to distortions to flangers. Each instrument can also have it's own FX. I haven't devled too deeply into the FX section yet, but everything we have used sounds pretty, well, usable!
Patterns are 16 steps long as a default, but each instrument can have it's own pattern length, and upto 8 patterns can be chained together (that's the A - H buttons on the left). It can be a little awkward to program multi-pattern like this, as it is not always clear which pattern is displayed, and which is playing.
All-in-all, I think this is a great drum machine for bread-and-butter drum programming in any EDM or hip-hop style. For playing live it is not so good, despite Roland's moniker of "Rhythm Performer, although there are some performance features that would work well in a dance orientated EDM setting. It is quick to program and almost always sounds good, and I am still discovering more features after six months of use, despite Roland's abysmal documentation.

If you have a great piece of music equipment you think we should have a look at then leave a link in the comments!

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