HAPPY 626 day! Roland TR-626 advertisement, 1988 / 626 ReBirth Mod

Roland TR-626 advertisement / TR-626 ReBirth Mod - HAPPY 626 day!

Well, I don't have a lot of TR-626 marketing material (you can read the original TR-626 ad blog post here.), but I wanted to celebrate the awesomeness of 626 day somehow. So I decided to merge it in with one of my recent fascinations: Propellerhead's ReBirth.

And what better way to combine these two fun activities than by creating a mod that substitutes the 808 and 909 drum machines in ReBirth with  ----- THE HORROR!!!! ----- a TR-626.

That's right, dammit. Deal with it.   :)

I've wanted to learn about making mods for ReBirth as far back as I've known mods existed - how to change the drum sounds, how to change the graphics, all of it. And it turns out the 626 is almost a perfect drum machine to port over because the number of sounds it contains matches pretty well with the number of sounds that the 808 and 909 modules in ReBirth contain. Its definitely not a perfect match (as you'll see) but it works.

Update: Reminder - I'm using ReBirth 2.0 and mod was created for V2.

Diving right it, I quickly learned there are quite a few limitations/idiosyncrasies that determine just how the sounds could be mapped out. The big ones included:

1. The basic functionality of each drum machine can't be changed. So, the top half (the 808) had to function similarly to the 808 in ReBIrth, and the bottom half (the 909) had to function similarly to the 909. So, for example, instrument selection on the top half could be done through something like that 808 dial, while the bottom half of sounds had to be selected through the buttons.

2. The template image file can be modified, but they need to be kept at the exact widths and heights, so the placement of all the dials and selection buttons can't really be changed. And dials had to be there, even if they ended up having no effect on the sound (more on that below).

3. Some sounds that have "Tune" dials, are actually just different samples. For example, the "Tune" dial for the 909 low/mid/high toms change the pitch of each respective tom sample. But the "Tune" dial on the TR-909 bass drum actually consists of four different samples, each with different amounts of low end. Efficient programming - but less variation for the 909 bass drum. BUT this opened up the possibility of slotting more than one sound into that drum selection.

Based on these "rules", I mapped out the TR-626 sounds across the two drum machines like this:

The actual TR-626 allowed a lot more control of each sound - for example, tuning of each instrument - and so some functionality was lost depending on where I decided to slot in the 626's sounds.  There's a lot riding on that selection!

So, let's look at each drum sound in more detail to see what I did.

TR-626 bass drums (slotted into 909 bass drum): 

As mentioned earlier, the 909 bass drum "Tune" dial is actually made up of four samples. So, I could slot the two 626 bass drum sounds here. This gave me two extra sample slots, so I added reverb on to those two 626 bass drum sounds to create the two extra samples. So, I renamed the "Tune" dial to  "SND" and with it you can select between these four sounds.

Original 626 bass drum 1
Original 626 bass drum 2
626 bass drum 1 w/ reverb
626 bass drum 2 w/ reverb

The rest of the dials for the bass drum work as expected: "Level" controls volume, "ATT" simulates faster attach by adding high end to the beginning of the sound and "DEC" (decay) increases the envelope time of the sound and is most audible on the reverb tail of the two extra drum sounds.

TR-626 snare drums (slotted into the 909 snare drum):

The 909 snare drum in ReBirth is slightly more intricate than the bass drum - and is a really good example of how the programmers cut some corners to try and get as many variations of the 909 snare into ReBirth with limited processing power.

The final sound of the 909 snare in ReBirth is made from a layered combination of five samples from the "Tune" dial that give the drum sound more bottom end, and three samples from the "Snap" dial which incrementally adds more of that higher frequency 909 snare "noise" we all know and love to the final sound. The "Tone" dial seems to be adjusting the length of the envelop for the "Snap" samples.

I decided the easiest thing to do would be to insert the three TR-626 snare drums into the sample slots of  the "Tune" dial and label it "SND". Then I just used silence in the snap settings so that dial, and its corresponding "Tone" dial wouldn't have any effect on the snare drum sound in any way. The dials still appear because you can't turn those off, but I did relabel them "---" to indicate they didn't do anything.

As mentioned, the "Tune" dial has space for five samples, so along with the three original snare sounds, I added reverb to Snare 1 and Snare 3 and put those in the other two slots. So, the 'SND" dial can select between these five sounds:

Original 626 snare drum 1
Original 626 snare drum 2
Original 626 snare drum 3
626 snare drum 1 with reverb
626 snare drum 3 with reverb

The only other dial that functions is "Level", affecting the volume of the sound.

TR-626 low, high muted and high open congas (slotted into the 909 low, mid and high tom)

I've put the low, muted and open congas next to the snare drums. They fit well here and the "Tune", "Dec" and "Level" dials works as they should - although there isn't much decay adjustment on the mute and open high congos since they are such short sounds anyways.

TR-626 rim shot, clap, closed hi hat, open hi hat, crash cymbal and ride cymbal (slotted into the same spots as the 909 sounds)

Made sense to slot the same percussion sounds from the TR-626 into the rim shot, clap, hi hats, crash and ride cymbal spots. "Level", "Dec" and "Tune" dials work as they should.

TR-626 low timbale (slotted into 808 bass drum)

This was an easy replacement of the sample - "Level" dial adjusts volume,"Tune" dial takes out hign-end of the sample, and "Dec" shortens or lengthens the envelop of the sound.

TR-626 hi timbale (slotted into the 808 snare drum)

This was a trickier one. The 808 bass drum "Tune" dial automatically eq's the one sample, but the 808 snare drum sound is made from five samples under the "Tune" dial and three samples under the "Snap" dial.

So, to emulate the "Tune" effect of the low timbale, I created five different hi timbale samples that enhanced or cut some high end from the original sample. There was no use for the three sample slots used for the "Snap" dial, so I just replaced with silence for those and removed the snap label.

"Level" dial affects volume as it should.

TR-626 low, mid and high toms (slotted into 808 tom/conga switches)

Made sense to put the two sets of 626 toms into the switchable 808 tom/conga slots - one set when the toggle switch is in the down position, the other set with the toggle switch is up. "Level" and "Tune" dials work as expected.

TR-626 shaker, clave, low and hi agogo (slotted into the 808 rim shot, clap, clave and maracas switches)

These might have been the four hardest choices to make since it would mean that only two of the four sounds would be available at any one time. In the end, I chose to put the shaker, clave, low and hi agogos into these slots.

"Level" dials work as expected for each sound.

TR-626 cowbell, cup cymbal, china cymbal and tambourine (slotted into the 808 cow bell, cymbal, open and closed hi hats)

The last four percussion sounds of the 626 were slotted into these last four 808 spots.

All corresponding"Level" and "Dec" dials work as expected. The "Tone" dial for the cup cymbal removes bass frequencies of the sample as it's turned.

And that's that!

Is it perfect. Definitely not. But all in all, it was a fun little project and a great way to learn how the programmers of ReBirth managed to cram so much goodness in an efficient manner and how they cut corners to maximize processing power.

A nice balance, I'd say.

I've put the mod (for use with ReBirth 2) up on Google Drive until I get a chance to send to one of the ReBirth mod sites.

Here's a short video of my 626 Mod in ReBirth.  :)

Roland TR-626 "The drum machine with today's sounds, tomorrow's features and yesterday's price" ad, Electronic Musician 1988

Roland TR-626 "The drum machine with today's sounds, tomorrow's features and yesterday's price" colour advertisement from page 9 in the May 1988 issue of Electronic Musician.

Happy 6/26 day!

I guess it was kind of predictable that I would post a TR-626 advertisement on 6/26 day, especially after doing the same for the also misunderstood TR-505 on 5/05 day. But it makes sense since they have so much in common, not least of which is their extremely good looks. Sure, not everyone will agree with that statement, but I love those really clean lines and beige colour scheme. The TR-626 also has a similar programming style to the TR-505 - simple and easy to play with. Can't argue with that either.

But, unlike the TR-505, the 626 features eight individual outs to allow the user to separate some of the sounds out. And, speaking of sounds, it also came with a lot more of them - 30 to be exact, including three snares! In fact, sound wise, I'd almost say its more of a TR-707/727 hybrid. And did I mention those sounds are TUNABLE!?!? Sweeeeet.

Roland also took a different approach to the placement of this advertisement - choosing to not advertise the TR-626 in Keyboard Magazine at all - at least as far as I can tell anyways. Instead, Roland chose to push the TR-626 in magazines such as Musician and Electronic Musician. Quite a long run in EM in fact, running for five months from January to May, 1988.

So, what was Roland advertising in Keyboard instead during that time period? Large ads - sometimes three or four pages long - for their flagship D-50 synthesizer and S-50 sampler. I can't even find a Keyboard Report or spec sheet entry for the TR-626. It's like it didn't exist there. I gotta be wrong though, so I plan to keep checking.

The ad itself isn't too colourful, keeping to the colour scheme of the drum machine itself. And it includes a lot of text. I mean, *A LOT*. And because there is no visual cue of paragraph breaks, it makes it even harder to read. Just a huge wall of words.

Which is too bad, because there are a lot of good points being made throughout. I've mentioned the number of sounds, their tuning, etc above. But two other pieces of info really jump out if you do take the time to read it.

First is that Roland has included the price - $495! Not too shabby, and from a historical perspective its always great to see a price included.

Second, and maybe even more interesting, is that Roland makes reference to the fact this is the first drum machine with a memory card interface (I've bolded the important bits):

"But probably the most important performance feature is one you won't find anywhere else - and it's an idea that makes the TR-626 the first drum machine that's really usable in a live performance. We've added a Memory Card Interface..."

I'm assuming they are making a differentiation between a memory card and a memory cartridge, which drum machines like the TR-909, TR-707 and TR-727 featured. A card can definitely hold a lot more data!

Could this be the first drum machine to have a memory card interface?

I'll have to do more digging! But right now I'm gonna go play on my TR-626.

Don't forget to hug a 626 today!