Roland CompuRhythm CR-78 Demo

Brief demo of some of the features on the Roland CR-78 drum machine. Mostly playing around with rhythm selections (incl. A/B variations), voice cancel, tempo, automatic fills, automatic fading, etc. And of course no CR-78 demo would be complete without playing "In the Air Tonight" and some Hall & Oates ("Kiss On My List"). The former uses the "Disco-2" rhythm with snare cancelled out; the latter uses "Rock-1" with automatic fill 7.

On a side note, I haven't found any permutation of rhythms to give the exact bass drum pattern on "In the Air Tonight". Maybe this is how Phil did it as well, but I just used the programming interface to make a custom rhythm with this bass drum pattern. Then I load this at the same time as "Disco-2" (these are the two yellow buttons pressed in the demo).

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  Music

[mrduckbutt]

FYI - I had wondered about those extra bass drum beats on the 'In the Air Tonight' pattern. I guess Phil did program those on top of the Disco-2 beat like I had to do for this video .. here's his quote: "'In the Air Tonight' was just a drum machine pattern that I took off that CR78 drum machine. You could eliminate certain sounds and program bass drums and snare drums, so I programmed a bass drum part into it, but basically the rest of it was already on there."

[Obelisk2290]

does it have multiple outs?

[mrduckbutt]

- It has high/low impedance main output, plus a trigger output (no separate voice outputs or anything)

[senorverde09]

Heart of Glass at the beginning?

[mrduckbutt]

- I've always seen Heart of Glass listed as a CR-78 tune, and the beguine/rhumba rhythms are nearly identical (rhumba is what you hear at the beginning, and you hear both around 2:28).  I could never get it to sound identical though, even mixing with other presets. Maybe they added some programmed bits in there with it?

[senorverde09]

Well, it's worth a shot. I think everything you did was pretty dang close to the orignal in my opinion (in the air tonight seems tricky). Can you try H&O's 'I can't go for that' on that thing? I watched a live at daryl's episode (episode 10) where he mentioned that no can do was made with a 78 using rock and roll one pattern. Check it out if you haven't. Good luck!

[mrduckbutt]

- That's right, 'I Can't Go For That' uses the B-variation of the Rock-1 preset (you can hear it briefly at 2:58, that double-snare beat).

[replicantplanet]

i had one in the 1980's and sold it for £20 when times were hard, one of my biggest regrets

[michael jagger]

did 'I cant go for that' the cr78 in it?

[Chris Garner]

I wish Roland would release a new verse of this, and not a digital version.

[kingofallwhites]

Kiss On My List uses this too right? From Hall and Oates? Wanna sell it?

[luap ekcol]

The high hat sound is just beautiful

[mr2000aaa]

Gary Numan used this extensivly 1980-1984

[buginene]

remind me to smile!



[VIGOCHAofficial]

That is one huge drum machine.

--Victor Golf Charles, soon-to-be user of vintage music equipment

[gjc82071]

See Are Seventy Ate

[Illifornia2000]

awesome video, I wouldn't even know where to start in buying one. I know they were released a year after I was born (1978) as I was born in 1977. I like the video! awesome nevertheless. :)