Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland, has died | Hacker News Reader

Ikutaro Kakehashi, founder of Roland, has died

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245 pointsmolecule79 comments

Talk about a pioneer of the consumer electronics age. As someone who went to grad school to search for my future in music technology, this hits home. I chose that path inspired by exactly the sort of tech that Kakahashi built with Roland. In particular, it was their BOSS ME-33 multieffect unit [1], which was the first piece of music tech hardware I ever bought. It unlocked an entire universe of sounds for an 18-year-old me, searching for my creative identity. My identity, period, for that matter.

To take this in a wildly different direction, since about 2010, I've felt this ever-increasing impression that the world is being handed over from the post-WWII generation to mine. Every living legend that passes crystallizes that feeling. It's on us to take the reigns of this world and steer it, whether it's starting the Roland of this century, or simply effecting the changes to make our existence on this planet sustainable.

[1] https://www.boss.info/us/products/me-33/

Roland made it possible for me to learn to play button accordion. My landlord runs a psychology practice upstairs, and my wife is not fond of loud noises, so I would have very little practice time with an acoustic accordion. So I bought a Roland V-Accordion instead, which has allowed me to practice regularly even at 1 AM (as I just did) without disturbing anyone.

The V-Accordion was a personal idea of Mr. Kakehashi's [1], one I'm very glad he was able to usher into this world. I'm musically richer for it.

[1] http://www.accordions.com/index/squ/archives/0811/roland/his...

Their V-Drums were also probably best in class.

I knew I couldn't be the only techie who took up button accordions (though diatonics in my case). Luckily my flat is very soundproof, so I can get away with it, however I do know of a guy who is one of the main people restoring the English bagpiping tradition who had a similar problem.

Rather than getting digital pipes, however, he filled his wardrobe with bedding/duvets/pillows and would practice them by sitting there with the pipes stuck into a wardrobe.

Roland do actually make a diatonic model of their accordion, and it's pretty popular, however it doesn't work quite as well as the chromatic models due to the eccentricites of that particular instrument.

Edit: Ah ha, as I thought the FR-18 diatonic was in fact discontinued. It's a shame, as it does actually have quite a few fans, but the market is much smaller than for the chromatic models: https://www.roland.com/us/products/fr-18_diatonic/

I first learned about Roland because of their partnership with Sierra On-Line and the MT-32.

I remember Scott Murphy (Space Quest co-creator) told a story about the first time Roland came to hear how Sierra was using the MT-32. They were blown away by the full musical scores they sequenced (Space Quest 3). He thinks they were expecting Space Invaders like sound effects.

A little more context for those who don't know the history of music in PC gaming, Sierra was the first major company to push hard on PC sound cards. They partnered up with Roland and Adlib to promote and sell their cards so they could take advantage of them for their games.

Wikipedia citation: King's Quest IV was the first commercially released game for PC compatibles to support sound cards instead of only the standard built-in speaker.

Sierra took it seriously and hired professional musicians to kick off their effort.

Hollywood composer William Goldstein (Fame) was hired to compose King's Quest IV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19r6RnReAf4

Supertramp drummer, Bob Siebenberg, composed the Space Quest III soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxEP05TtOfE

Wow, and I still remember how captivating the intro cutscene music was in KQIV!

Yeah, they really did put a lot of effort in supporting a variety of scattered audio and video options back in those days.

Kings quest IV, as well as Hero's Quest I, both specifically supported my Casio keyboard. Multi-channel MIDI output using different instruments which they mapped correctly, and even some of the built-in sound effect channels for effects like flowing water or bird chirps.

Same with video, I had a Tandy which had its own proprietary video mode of 320x200 resolution in 16 colours, which was specifically supported you most Sierra games, along with the generic CGA and EGA modes. Tandy also had a proprietary 3-channel sound mode which was supported, though the MIDI via my external keyboard sounded way better.

It wasn't that proprietary. It's the same 3-voice TI PSG used in the IBM PCjr, TI 99/4A, BBC Micro and various other computers, consoles and arcade machines of the time.

Was the programming interface the same? Curious because I recall "Tandy" being a specific sound option at the time.

On that note, I'd just like to say Sierra was one of my favorite game companies as a kid, especially the King's Quest series.

On the one hand, I'm glad that Roberta and Ken Williams have lived a pretty awesome post-Sierra life traveling the world on a boat, but the kid part of me wishes they had continued creating games.

I had one of these connected to my Roland electric piano in the early nineties. I was amazed to discover I could connect it to my PC's soundblaster ISA card via its joystick port with a MIDI adapter cable and have an amazing soundtrack to Space Quest. It even displayed "Insert Buckazoid" on its one line, 20 char VF display.

Here's a picture of the infamous "Insert Buckazoid" :)

http://www.midimusicadventures.com/queststudios/mt32-resourc...

Video demo of the MT-32 playing Space Quest songs (plus a hardware teardown at the end):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMmFcs-_4x4

The TR-808 is basically singularly responsible for the most popular genre of music in the United States today (hiphop), as well as in conjunction with its younger sibling the TR-909 all of modern dance music via house and techno. It's sort of an amazing swath of modern music. A true pioneer.

I upvoted you, but I would somewhat correct you saying how the technology helped unlock the creativity of the pioneers of these genres. Although we rightly focus on Kakehashi here, I just want to be careful not to erase the marginalized people that used these tools to actually make the music.

That's substantially overstating the case. The TR-808 is an iconic drum machine, but you're far more likely to hear a cut-up sample of the Amen Break or the Funky Drummer Break.

The importance of the TR-808, TR-909 and TB-303 is largely accidental. These units were a commercial failure and gained cult success largely because they could be bought cheaply. In much the same way, grunge musicians tended to use whatever horrible old guitars were languishing at the back of pawn shops - Fender Jaguars and Jazzmasters, Mosrites, Teiscos and Danelectros.

In my opinion, by far the most important work done by Roland was the development of the MIDI standard. Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith moved mountains to get the industry to agree on a common standard. MIDI was the starting pistol for the modern age of music production.

http://www.whosampled.com/The-Winstons/Amen,-Brother/ http://www.whosampled.com/James-Brown/Funky-Drummer/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

Frequently amen break and others are replayed and not sampled. Some of those on the link not even amen breaks. Whosampled has tons of the false reports - many of those are not samples but replays, either on 'real' drums or drum machines. Whosampled more accurately is who borrowed

A novice producer was walking in the forest with Sensei Akai. The novice asked Akai "If I extract the groove from the Amen Break using Beat Detective, then replay it with identical-sounding samples, is it still the Amen Break?". Sensei Akai replied "Mu". The novice was enlightened.

> grunge musicians tended to use whatever horrible old guitars were languishing at the back of pawn shops

Roland had a connection to grunge too - Boss effects pedals were a division of Roland, and Kurt Cobain used the DS-1 and DS-2 Distortion pedals on Nirvana's albums.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_Corporation

Would not say singularly, the TB-303 featured prominently in Chicago House music and Acid House particularly.

I know, I own several. Acid house isn't acid house without an 808, though.

Are you in NorCal? I've never seen a 303 IRL and would like to see a demo, if you don't mind?

The reissue (whist not sounding _exactly_ the same) is pretty faithful, The TB03 [0], which will be on demo in a local music shop for sure.

If you want to get the most out of the hands-on, read the manual/watch tutorial videos before you head in, so you're not trying to figure it out in the short time you're there, you can just get stuck in (this is advice from a synth addict who is pretty much creating a museum at this point).

[0] https://www.roland.com/us/products/tb-03/

Pics of your collection?

I am frequently but my synth collection lives in Berlin at the moment, sorry.

Several! Sitting on a gold mine!

It's not singularly responsible. It would have happened with or without it (the people responsible for Hip hop and house/Garage/Techno were incredibly resourceful making the the best of what they could lay their hands on)- but it would sound very very different. No 808 and whole genres like trap and electro probably wouldn't exist.

My argument is that because those genres would sound very very different without that machine that the 808 is singularly responsible for them sounding the precise way that they do. :)

I can only counter with 'house is a feeling'.:-)

no roland gear in this one: https://youtu.be/_NSn5RfxoXs

edit: actually that could well be a space echo, heh

I'm an idiot. I didn't even realize that Roland is a Japanese company.

I remember reading a story about how he picked the name "Roland". He wanted a company name that would be pronounced and spelled the same way in any language and country, and escape translation issues. The irony was not lost on him that the Japanese (his home country) have trouble pronouncing the 'R'.

It's more the l than the r, the pronunciation is also otherwise completely different in Japanese, because they don't have consonant finals, only nasals. You end up with ro-rahn-doh.

That's what I was thinking. If he really wanted a name that would be the same in English and Japanese, he would have nixed the "d" at the end and called the company "Rolan".

I have to wonder if something like this exchange ever occurred:

"I named it Roland because I wanted it to sound the same in other languages..."

"But, but... English speakers read it as Roland. Japanese speakers read it as rorando."

"Yes, exactly. Same thing."

To Japanese L and R are the same sound and are interchangeable because they can't hear the difference.

Another funny story is the Nikon's single lens reFlex camera, the F: it was called than instead of the Nikon R because of the L-R "problem".

The Japanese I met didn't have any problems. They get enough exposure as kids to Western media and English in school.

You met a very small sample. The stereotype in the West is that Japanese can't do the L sound when it's actually specific versions of the R sound that give people not exposed to it early enough alot of issues

In college, I talked to a Japanese friend about it (I was studying Japanese at the time, so differences between the languages were a natural topic). He could tell the difference between "right" and "light" when I enunciated them clearly, one after the other to provide an immediate contrast between them, but couldn't otherwise. In most cases, context was enough to disambiguate the meaning.

So, he can (of course) physiologically hear the difference, but he wasn't conditioned to listen for it. There are features like that for me in other languages (tones in Chinese, as one glaring example).

> they can't hear the difference.

There are no humans that "can't" hear the difference between L and R.

But there are languages that don't have both sounds.

Just like English-speaking people usually being unable – or unwilling – to say the soft T sound in た、て、と but it's not like you can't hear the difference: [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMYsdjeeC1Y

>There are no humans that "can't" hear the difference between L and R.

You'd be surprised.

There are no 100% objective sounds the ear directly hears -- interpretation and identification of sounds happens at the brain, and a person that was raised with a specific language/pronunciation can be "deaf" to the difference of certain sounds.

Evidence from Best & Strange (1992) and Yamada & Tohkura (1992) suggest that Japanese speakers perceive English /r/ as somewhat like the compressed-lip velar approximant /w͍/ and other studies[4] have shown speakers to hear it more as an ill-formed /ɺ/. Goto (1971) reports that native speakers of Japanese who have learned English as adults have difficulty perceiving the acoustic differences between English /r/ and /l/, even if the speakers are comfortable with conversational English, have lived in an English-speaking country for extended periods, and can articulate the two sounds when speaking English. Japanese speakers can, however, perceive the difference between English /r/ and /l/ when these sounds are not mentally processed as speech sounds. Miyawaki et al. (1975) found that Japanese speakers could distinguish /r/ and /l/ just as well as native English speakers if the sounds were acoustically manipulated in a way that made them sound less like speech (by removal of all acoustic information except the F3 component). Lively et al. (1994) found that speakers' ability to distinguish between the two sounds depended on where the sound occurred. Word-final /l/ and /r/ with a preceding vowel were distinguished the best, followed by word-initial /r/ and /l/. Those that occurred in initial consonant clusters or between vowels were the most difficult to distinguish accurately. Bradlow et al. (1997) provide evidence that there is a link between perception and production to the extent that perceptual learning generally transferred to improved production. However, there may be little correlation between degrees of learning in perception and production after training in perception, due to the wide range of individual variation in learning strategies.

The same can happen with colors (for them, depending on whether the language/culture has a name for them).

So what you write is not 100% true. At best, it's debatable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_... l/_by_Japanese_speakers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...

https://eagereyes.org/blog/2011/you-only-see-colors-you-can-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-blue-and-how-do-w...

So what you're telling me is that I should definitely not make a ruby program called 'lake' that operates on 'Lakefiles'. Got it.

Here's a really funny one: English speakers don't even notice the difference between 'th' in theater and 'th' in the. The sound is completely different, but unless the difference is pointed out, we never even notice it.

R and L are way more similar.

> English speakers don't even notice the difference between 'th' in theater and 'th' in the.

So I can say "the" with a "th" that sounds like "thanks", or "theater" that sounds like "the" and nobody will be able to tell the difference? Imagine me saying "that" as "thatch". No one would think I have a lisp? No one would say I'm not a native speaker? You know that's BS, unless you said can't perceive instead of can't hear.

I'm saying English speakers never realize the two sounds are different until someone points it out. Of course we can hear it, the sounds are very different.

It's easy to think that the way we think about sounds is perfectly natural, except that it isn't. The reality is that it's all relative. I'm sure the tones in Chinese come naturally to you but to the rest of us it's a challenge.

As for R and L, Japanese speakers can certainly hear the difference, but it's hard for them to remember or pronounce the difference. Believe me I've tried to explain it many times, and when you try you realize the difference is more subtle than we always assumed.

Korean has more vowel sounds than English. We can hear the difference, but feel convinced that it "doesn't matter" and that "those sounds are practically the same". And it's devilishly hard for us to consistently get the sound right. And that's what R and L are like.

We do in a small set of contexts (for example, teeth and teethe) where it can distinguish meaning. There are relatively few of those though.

It distinguishes meaning in all contexts as far as I can tell.

In some words, either the voiced or unvoiced variant do not have an assigned meaning, but you must use the correct one.

In some cases, there is a near clash. For example, "thin" and "then" have a different vowel, which is clear when they are enunciated clearly. However, when it's an unstressed vowel in surrounding speech, particularly fast speech, the difference relies much more on the leading consonant, because unstressed vowels in English gravitate toward the central [Ə] sound.

There are also situations like "this'll" (contraction of this will) versus "thistle".

I grew up speaking italian, which has basic vowel sounds, but effectively no difference in length.

Learning to hear the difference between ship and sheep took me a long time, and it's the same for everyone I know. Most of my friends who are not regularly exposed to english still fail to notice it or pronounce it.

The same for learning to hear the difference between "a" and "o" in hungarian.

Of course everybody can learn to hear, but it's definitely non-trivial. Your brain just isn't wired to look for the difference, even if clearly the sound is there.

Curious episode: there was this story about an American woman who came to a public office where I lived here in Italy asking about a place near the seaside, and really couldn't understand how the employee would continue using the word "bitch" so freely... it took them some time to clarify that he was referring to the beach :D

That happens. I had a colleague (here in Finland) who in the 1990's happily and regularly e-mailed English colleagues with a greeting "Hello gays" instead of "guys". The English, not surprisingly, never corrected him.

In German the letters e and i sound the same to me. The difference is quite obvious to native german speakers but both sound to me like the English e.

What do you mean? 'i' is like in 'India' while 'e' is like in 'enter' but more contracted (otherwise it would be more like an ä). Maybe you're talking about 'ie', but that is a diphthong and is spelled out as a long i.

In some respects I feel like the Teenage Engineering OP-1 and pocket operators are taking over the spirit of the Roland 808. Easy to use but surprisingly deep hardware gear:

https://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-1

Roland Fantom X user here. Those look pretty awesome! I had never heard of these instruments before now, glad you posted this. The OP-1 looks like the type of thing I'd been hoping to find as an affordable synth for a while.

I really like the pocket operators. I have 3. The PO-12 Rhythm is pretty awesome. The push buttons with lights is throwback to the 808 style of inputing rhythm.

https://teenage.engineering/products/po

There was a "808 emulator" (don't call it that wink..) for mac version (os 8) now iPad which I don't have. Though it doesn't say anything about roland in the description... You can see the 16 beats in a line with the led button. I will say I disliked the dial as a computer interface (works great physically, with a mouse not as well) and I haven't tried the iOS version..

https://www.propellerheads.se/rebirth

A short documentary on the TB-303: https://youtu.be/omHUR3R0Qqw

Great documentary. Made me think of art and emergent behaviors on top of technology

The TB-303 is such a strange machine, with such an odd sound, and it's a seminal piece of electronic music history.

I nearly bought one a decade ago for 1,000, now they go for 3,000!

My closet just went up in value. Maybe its time to stop hoarding 80s synths. Not sure if I can part with my MKS-7 though. A sad day.

When I got my first Roland card to play XWing that was a revelation.

I guess this is as good a thread as any - does anyone know where the TR-909 cymbals came from?

The kicks are obviously synthesized, but the open and closed hihats sound suspiciously much like audio waves that are simply played at a higher and lower frequency as you twist the "decay" knob.

If they're samples, where do they come from? They're totally unlike any other hihat I've heard, definitely totally different from an actual hihat on a physical drum kit. I guess 90% of dance/techno music in the last 3 decades uses the TR-909 open hihat or a mildly tweaked version of it. Yet it must've been a rather strange, unnatural sound when the 909 was released. What were the motivations of the people who designed or recorded this sound? How was it made? Was it sampled or synthesized and then recorded?

Was Kakehashi involved?

The cymbal was picked by Atushi Hoshiai. Here is a short video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXsMvTSCkuY

I think part of the reason the hihat sounds so special/unusual is due to the fact that the sample was stored in 6bit.

Nothing sounds quite like the 8 0 8

My first exposure to Roland was watching Adamski playing live with a 909 drum machine back in 1990. Really mind blowing to see that one person could be the whole band. My first drum machine was a roland 707, by the early 90s their analog gear was hard to find but their digital gear still had the same beautiful approach to user interface design. I learned midi sequencing with a roland jv-80.

808s & Heartbreak. Kanye used a Roland TR-808 heavily for all beats on that album.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Ka...

The 808 was already famous for being used for years and helping create the sound of hip hop.

And before that, electronica - 808 State et al.

Funny, wikipedia 808 page led me to the first Roland founder company called Ace Tone :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Tone

And all kinds of electronic music. 909 and 303 are heavily used in techno and house.

Documentary on the history of the 808, complete with a great soundtrack and interview with the inventor:

808themovie.com/

I was thinking more "Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack"; guess it depends on your cultural exposure :-)

I see a Super Nintendo but no 808

As I understand it, in most productions these days, "808 type sounds" often tend to either be sampled (and manipulated), or synthesized from something else.

In other words, whether Kanye had access to an original 808 or not, the Akai MPC you see in the picture probably also played a prominent role. :) I also understand Kanye's big on using an old Ensoniq ASR-10 for sampling duties.

I still remember the battles between the Adlib, Roland, and Sound Blaster cards for PCs..

It was a strange time. We quickly went from PC speakers to far better cards like the Soundblaster/16/AWE32 (one couldn't find the other makes where I lived).

But since then the PC audio market has gone rather quiet? Apart from built in you obviously still get Soundblasters and the ASUS Xonar's, but there seems to be very little to no competition and drive left in the field.

Indeed. And games have stopped flaunting advanced effects like environment-based dynamic reverb and position-based occlusion etc.

What the hell happened?

I suspect it was Microsoft's push for the dumbed-down XBOX, which also cost us the more advanced DirectInput API in favor of XInput (which, the last time I checked, was missing many features from the older API, like complex force-feedback.)

Very sad.

I'm still rocking an EP7 IIe Piano after all these years...

808 down. R.I.P.

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