Roland’s 50th-anniversary history places the CR-68 in the 1978 CompuRhythm line. A 1981 Roland catalogue sets it beside the older TR-66 and presents it as the CR-78’s preset counterpart, without the CR-78’s user-programming or fade functions. The owner’s manual gives the working picture: 34 preset rhythms from 11 percussion sources, with fills, rolling and breaks that can be called to arrive on the following measure.
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The machine keeps turning up.
Xiu Xiu / Pina, Coconut & Cherry
Xiu Xiu used the CR-68 on “Pina, Coconut & Cherry” from 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips.
Read Danny Turner, “A Few Minutes with Xiu Xiu” ↗The CompuRhythm for choosing quickly
Roland’s 1981 catalogue places it beside the TR-66 and describes it as an advanced rhythm machine with a complete selection of patterns, modes and controls. The catalogue drew its distinction from the CR-78 around authorship: the CR-78 let a player write and retain new rhythms, while the CR-68 asked the player to shape the rhythms Roland had already composed.
Period press
Roland catalogue: CR-68 beside TR-66
Printed p. 59 / PDF p. 31; CR-68 and TR-66 product page.
A machine that waits for the next bar
The owner’s manual makes its performance logic unusually plain. Select a rhythm, choose automatic or manual control, then tell the machine whether a fill, rolling figure or break should arrive. The instruction says the change lands on the first beat of the following measure. A separate measure selector can call a variation after two, four, eight, twelve or sixteen bars. That is not step programming; it is a small arranger listening for the right place to turn a corner.
The pattern book in the box
The manual prints the rhythms as notation. Waltz, shuffle, slow rock, bossa nova, samba, mambo and the four Rock patterns are not vague style labels: their bass drum, snare, conga, bongo, claves, maracas, cymbal and hi-hat parts are set down on the page. Rock 1 is there as a fixed score, with A and B variations. The player could combine buttons, rebalance low and high percussion, add accent and decide when the machine should interrupt itself, but the basic groove had a definite written identity.
A clock for the room around it
The rear panel gives the CR-68 a second life beyond accompaniment. Its trigger output can send eight-beat, sixteen-beat or combined pulses, and the manual explicitly illustrates a connection to a sequencer or Jupiter-4. The rhythm machine could therefore provide more than a drum track: it could lend a tempo grid to another electronic instrument while its own analogue percussion carried the surface of the arrangement.
Xiu Xiu chose the limitation
In a 2024 Roland interview, Jamie Stewart named the CR-68 as a favourite drum machine and said Xiu Xiu used it on “Pina, Coconut & Cherry” from the album 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips. Stewart’s account brings the old design forward without turning it into myth: the limited programming removes one set of decisions, while fill timing, imperfect tempo and the fixed character of the sounds become material to write against. That is a modern use for an old proposition — let the machine decide the groove, then make the arrangement answer it.
Sources
The visual archive