The Verge: It wasn’t so long ago that electronic music production was the work of pioneers. Giorgio Moroder and Don Lewis synthesized monstrous Moog mainframes in the disco era; Roger Linn kick-started hip-hop in 1988 with the Akai MPC60. But making music on a computer was a dream just beginning to come true in the ‘90s — boxes were getting faster and cheaper, but music software remained torturously buggy. Roland, a Japanese company with a long history of democratizing production by mass-producing and lowering the cost of new tech, saw an opportunity. The electronic music world lacked a product that efficiently combined sampling, performance, effects, and recording into one box — and so, in 1998, that world received the SP-808 Sampling Groovebox.
1 comment:
I think this is an especially interesting article because it is somewhat of an insight as to early electronic music and the history of electronic music. While I am not necessarily a "sound guy" I still really truly enjoy immersing myself in that world. In 1998 when the SP-808 came out it was a huuuuuge deal. This "box" could do everything that was needed at the time, and even though the features that are capable from this device could be replicated in soft ware, it was much more convenient and reliable to be able to just turn on, tune in, and make music. The SP-808 is essentially one of the most prominent building blocks of the electronic music era.
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