THE ELECTRONIC RHYTHM ARCHIVEStrange boxes. Familiar sounds.
Meet the instruments that gave musicians a different way to make time.
Choose a voice. Write sixteen steps. Hear the 808.
Play the instrument ↗02 / EXPLOREFollow your curiosity.From rhythm boxes to samplers, find an instrument.
Browse the archive ↓03 / READThe future, in print.See how the machines were introduced to their own time.
Open the print archive ↓Meet the objects, then follow their stories. Search a machine or maker, or explore a different era.
274 archive entries · photographs first · showing 30
The advertisements, catalogues and photographs that introduced these machines to the world.
The whole object, the smallest control, the records it entered. Each machine opens a different history.
ROLAND / 1980 / RHYTHM COMPOSER
A machine built to remember.
Sounds nobody forgot.
Inside the cabinet: analogue percussion and digital memory. Outside it: studios, performers and recordings that found something new in those circuits.
Enter the exhibition ↗Follow the records & playlists →
ROLAND / 1978 / COMPU-RHYTHM
A preset rhythm.
A very personal answer.
Named dances at the push of a button, four memories for a rhythm of your own, and controls that could change what a pattern became.
Explore the CR-78 history ↗A sound makes more sense when you can put your hands on it. Start with a voice, a pattern or a record.
Recorded voices, four rhythms from the Studio library, and sixteen keys for your own variation.
Open the player ↗02Three existing listening collections: the machine’s musical language, the research edition and its paths around the world.
Find the playlists ↗03Take the curiosity into Big Beat Studio and explore the project’s rhythm and sound libraries.
Enter the Studio ↗BEFORE IT WAS VINTAGE
At the counter, on a printed page, in the studio: a new machine needed an introduction. These documents let us meet the instruments before their later reputations arrived.
Browse the original typography, product photographs and promises. Then follow the controls into the histories and hear what musicians made of them.
Browse the catalogue shelf →Explore the advertising gallery →ELECTRONIC RHYTHM / HUMAN HISTORY
