808 documentary

[beats me]

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIS-o_--wqY

Just found out about this but the trailer is almost a year old and it hasn't come out yet. Hopefully soon.

[Angstrom]

Interesting, but the trailer has some nasty traces of that bullshit plastic sheen they put on everything now. Wobbly cam on everything, just like we are on a case with CSI. Plus some crime scene reconstructions with old tired men acting out what they did when their buddy put that beat in that one time.
I don't tend to like those style of documentaries, they are aimed at people on the periphery of the subject to get enough hype in 'em to beffudle their friends.

"hey did you know quantum physics is like really uncertain and shit!? Yeah, I watched a documentary bro"
These documentaries about "the impact of ... X" usually turn out pretty tedious, "9000 miles away from Tokyo it spurred on a whole wave of urban music in the volatile environment of New York!" (Editors note: buy in lots of stock footage of cool blacks guy in 1970s NY) yeah. Good. Great.

I would prefer it narrated by Werner Herzog and featuring interviews old retired Japanese guys still soldering stuff in their garages.

Meanwhile. If the documentary doesn't feature this story it is not even worth considering watching.

On a visit to Roland’s Tokyo offices in the late ‘70s, Don was working with chief engineer Tadao Kikumoto. "That day he had a bread board of an 808 and was showing me what was going on inside — he sort of bumped up against the breadboard and spilled some tea in there and all of a sudden he turned it on and got this pssh sound — it took them months to figure out how to reproduce it, but that ended up being the crash cymbal in the 808. There was nothing else like it. Nobody could touch it."

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/39325 ... underbelly

[TomViolenz]

Angstrom your brand of world weariness always brightens my day

Regarding legendary gear. I think one should not overlook that these are (almost) always post hoc assessments. At the time there was probably nothing legendary or even really special about constructing these devices. They were an enginering team at some gear company coming up with a cheap enough product to sell to the masses.
All these sounds that are now considered special were just incomplete attempts to copy reality with the means available for the planed price point.

That they became iconic is owed to the poor kids who could afford nothing better and made these sounds their own and thus popular.

If they wouldn't have hit that price point: no one would know about them.
If they would have decided the sound needs to be different with the chips available, we would most likely talk about a totally different iconic sound nowadays.

[beats me]

It will most likely be closer to Angstrom's worst fears because if it was closer to the story he would like told it would be released straight to vimeo with zero prerelease hype and feature none of the festival long list of big name artists and producers shown in the trailer end credits.

[re:dream]

I would prefer it narrated by Werner Herzog and featuring interviews old retired Japanese guys still soldering stuff in their garages.

Now that I would watch.

[Styles Bitchly]

Meh...that documentary looks more like a misty-eyed nostalgic walk down Hip-Hop memory lane, dripping with testaments from faux-thug "artistes" and producers than it is a genuine technical commentary on the machines themselves.

I won't knock those Roland drum & rhythm machines because they had their place and served a purpose, but their advent was the beginning of the great "cheesing down" of music in general, imo. I still have 808, 909 and 303 units bought back in the day - brand new in the original boxes gathering dust up on the shelf along with an Alesis SR-16 and countless other beat machines, but nothing tops the real deal. Tried them, thought they sounded plastic and thin, and tossed them aside. These things were cheap, accessible, and any Ape could make beats with them - that's really the only reason they became so pervasive and ubiquitous. If Roland hadn't existed and ACME had come along and created something similar using pushrods and a Sinclair ZX80 with ColecoVision samples, it would've been all the rage. I don't see the romanticism - besides, with all of the great available software emulations such as DR-008, Linn Drum, Battery, etc. etc., why would anyone even aspire to acquire this stuff anymore?

[re:dream]

their advent was the beginning of the great "cheesing down" of music in general, imo

No, that started with Equal Temperament

[Styles Bitchly]

their advent was the beginning of the great "cheesing down" of music in general, imo

No, that started with Equal Temperament

What?

[re:dream]

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

[Styles Bitchly]

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

Oh...that. I rather like chamber music. I'm assuming that you prefer the complex time signatures purveyed by the likes of Run–D.M.C. and Public Enemy.

[TomViolenz]

I wonder if it will be 10 or 20 years before the documentaries about Maschine start to come out

Let's just hope it won't be NIs video department who will make them

But in any case, Mr future documentary film maker, I hope you will interview me then, since I was instrumental in one of the earliest and most influential flame wars centered on it. AND, I was probably the first person in history to be called a Maschinehole

[tedlogan]

I would prefer it narrated by Werner Herzog and featuring interviews old retired Japanese guys still soldering stuff in their garages.

Now that I would watch.

heh, absolutely.

[Styles Bitchly]

Let's just hope it won't be NIs video department who will make them

Ugh - that's like listening to the guys from Kraftwerk recite Jabberwocky. I'd rather listen to Lemmy Kilmister do a video tutorial on dubstep wobble bass.

[re:dream]

Maschinehole

That's gotta be an EP title at the very least.

[john gordon]

808 and 909 are so overrated man. I can my fart sound as far as a 808 with software. Get over it or make a documentary about my ass.