The 808

The Roland 808. It’s the drum machine sound I grew up on. Round, blippy sounding toms. A kick drum loaded with enough sub-bass to shake an entire roller rink. From hip-hop to pop music, the 808 dominated the programmed drum sound of the early to mid 80′s. You can even hear the 808 on Marvin Gaye’s 1982 hit slow jam, “Sexual Healing”.

Loop #67

Today I decided to go for that old 808 sound on my acoustic kit… and then some. To get the classic, “round” tom effect, I grabbed my trusty pile of dirty t-shirts, laid them across the head of each drum and de-tuned one lug to get some pitch bend. The rest is in the mix. Lots of gating, a ton of compression, some heavy panning, a dash of sub-bass and the entire bus mix ran through an amp simulator. Yep, that’s a lot of digital plugins just to recreate an analog machine from 1980.

Preview Here:

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Download the Logic session here. (179MB)

Get the .wav file here.

Get the .rx2 file here.

131 BPM

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