THE ARTICLE · 7 MIN
Two machines from the early 1980s still shape how music is made. MIDI is the standard that lets keyboards, computers and music software talk to each other. The Roland TR-808 is a drum machine that was not a commercial success at first and became famous later. This page explains how each came about, using the records of the MIDI Association, Roland and the people involved — including the places where those records disagree.
Part 1: MIDI
How it started (1981–1982)
According to the MIDI Association’s history, the effort began when Roland’s president, Ikutaro Kakehashi, “first approached Tom Oberheim at the June 1981 Chicago NAMM show”. Oberheim recommended that the Japanese companies also contact Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits, who previewed his own proposal to Oberheim that summer, and in October 1981 Smith and Chet Wood presented a paper at the Audio Engineering Society convention proposing a “Universal Synthesizer Interface”: “a specification designed to enable inter-connecting synthesizers, sequencers and home computers with an industry-wide standard interface.”
That first proposal was different from the MIDI we know. A 1982 Sequential document quoted by the MIDI Association says: “The USI was proposed to be serial, operating at 19.2 kBaud, with TTL levels, and connected through phone jacks.” A meeting at the winter NAMM show in early 1982 decided to “add optoisolation to prevent audio ground loops, and to increase the speed to 31.25 kBaud”.
Even the name was negotiated. “The Japanese suggested UMI Universal Music Interface (You-Me) and Dave Smith countered with the name we all know today- MIDI”.
Not a two-man invention
Smith and Kakehashi are the names usually given. The MIDI Association’s own history puts it differently: “MIDI was not developed by two people or two companies”. It credits Roland engineer Tadao Kikumoto with work that “introduces the concepts of Running Status, Status Bytes and Data Bytes”, and records that when Dave Smith suggested 16 channels, a July 1982 fax from Roland, acting for the Japanese companies, agreed to “Increase the number of channels to 16 channels”.
Even MIDI’s round five-pin plug has a link to the second half of this story. Roland proposed “using a 5 PIN DIN which Roland was already using for DIN Sync in their TR-808 drum Machine”.
The first public demonstration (January 1983)
“1983 Winter NAMM Anaheim, California Jan 21-23 1983 The stage was finally set for the first public demonstration of MIDI.” The Recording Academy describes what happened: “They connected two competing manufacturers’ electronic keyboards, the Roland JP-6 synthesizer and Sequential Circuits Prophet 600”.
It was not an instant hit. The MIDI Association says the idea “that instantly MIDI became an overnight success was very far from the reality”.
The written standard came later that year: “The IMA MIDI Spec document dated August 5, 1983 is the one that was registered with the United States Copyright Office”. It was short: “The early MIDI 1.0 specification is a very short 14 page document.”
Recognition
In 2013 the Recording Academy honoured the two leads: “Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith receive Technical GRAMMY Award from the Recording Academy®”. The ceremony “was held during GRAMMY Week on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013.”
MIDI 2.0
MIDI 2.0 arrived 37 years after the first demonstration. The core MIDI 2.0 specification overview, published by Japan’s AMEI and the MIDI Manufacturers Association, is dated 20 February 2020. The MIDI Association’s own timeline gives two adoption dates on the same page: “January of 2020” and “February 20, 2020”.
It does not replace the original: “MIDI 2.0 is an extension of MIDI 1.0. It does not replace MIDI 1.0”. The MIDI Association names two main advances: higher resolution and “Profiles” that let devices agree how to behave. Original MIDI messages “were primarily limited to 7-bit data (0–127)”. MIDI 2.0 adds “16-bit Note Velocity (0–65,535)” and “32-bit Controller Data” — so “32-bit” applies to controllers, not to velocity.
Part 2: The Roland TR-808
What it was (1980)
Roland’s company history lists it simply: “1980 TR-808 Rhythm Machine This programmable rhythm machine allowed musicians to program an entire song”. Users could build their own patterns “Through a row of 16 distinctively colored buttons”.
Who designed it
Roland’s own account names a team: “Working under Tadao Kikumoto (seen here with an early prototype), Hiro Nakamura was tasked with developing the analog voice circuits”. Kikumoto has described his own part: “I proposed creating a Drum Synthesizer, instead of an expensive PCM”, and “the expandable Decay knob of the TR-808 was my intention”.
Why it sounds the way it does
The 808’s sounds are made by analog circuits, not recordings of real drums. Roland explains why: “Memory chips (needed to play back sampled recordings of “real” drum sounds) were too expensive at the time, so the engineers used analog synthesis”.
Roland also tells a story about its parts: “Transistors that had been rejected as “out of specification” were purchased by Roland and used as part of the TR-808’s sound-generating capability.” According to Roland, “One tiny component, the 2SC828-R, was so important to the final sound that, once supplies were exhausted, the TR-808 was discontinued.” We did not find an independent engineering source for this; it is Roland’s account.
A slow start
The 808 is often called a commercial failure. Roland’s own words are softer: “it wasn’t considered a commercial success”, and it was “only modestly successful when first released”. Digital drum machines were arriving: “In 1982, the competitor LinnDrum was launched, helping shift the trend away from analog and towards digital sample-based drum machines.”
Kikumoto says the team knew nothing of its popularity in the US and Europe “until 1992, when a well-informed guy from an overseas department told us about it”.
How long it was made
Roland’s own pages do not settle it. One says: “The Roland TR-808 was officially in production for just two years—from 1980 to 1982. Around 12,000 units were manufactured”. Another says only that it was “out of production by 1983”, which fits either year. Wikipedia’s article on the machine says production ended in 1983. We could not settle whether production ended in 1982 or 1983.
Early records
Roland’s editorial site names several early uses. Kikumoto recalls that Roland’s Japanese sales department “seemed to have rented one” to Yellow Magic Orchestra just before launch, and Roland’s editorial site says: “The year of its release, Roland’s seminal drum machine appeared live for the first time in a performance of YMO’s “1000 Knives.”” It became “a crucial component of the band’s 1981 album, BGM.” Roland also notes that “Afrika Bambaataa famously used the 808 on “Planet Rock.”” (1982), and that the machine reached “mainstream success that same year with Marvin Gaye’s hit” — “Sexual Healing” (1982). These examples come from Roland’s own site.
Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” used the 808’s predecessor, the CR-78. Roland says the CR-78 “became popular with established musicians like Phil Collins, who famously used it for the core groove on “In the Air Tonight.””
The re-creations
Roland has since made new versions. The TR-8 (announced in 2014) is digital; it uses “Analog Circuit Behavior (ACB) technology”, which Roland describes as “part-by-part analyses and faithful recreation of tonality and behavior”. The TR-08, announced on “August 8, 2017”, likewise uses ACB “to carefully recreate all the details and quirks of the original hardware by modeling each analog circuit”. The TR-1000, from 2025, is different: Roland calls it “the first Roland drum machine with a true analog engine in over 40 years”, with circuits from the TR-808 and TR-909 “faithfully recreated from the original designs”.
Our reading
Both stories are usually told as the work of one or two people and a single breakthrough moment. The records say otherwise: MIDI was negotiated between competing companies over several years, and the 808 was a team’s compromise with the price of memory chips that was not considered a commercial success and became famous only after later musicians took it up. Where the records disagree on a date, we have given both rather than pick one.
Sources
- The MIDI Association: “MIDI History Chapter 6 — MIDI Begins 1981–1983”; “Chapter 7 — MIDI Associations 1983–1985”; “55th GRAMMY Award for MIDI”; “Detailed timeline of MIDI 2.0 developments since January 2020”; “The State of MIDI 2.0” (February 2026 update).
- Audio Engineering Society e-library: Smith and Wood, “The ‘USI’, or Universal Synthesizer Interface”, Convention 70, paper 1845 (1981).
- Recording Academy: “Technical GRAMMY Award: Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith”.
- AMEI and MMA, M2-100-U MIDI 2.0 Specification Overview, version 1.0 (20 February 2020).
- Roland: company history; “The Future Is Still 808”; “Tadao Kikumoto: An Exclusive Conversation” (2020); “Yellow Magic Orchestra and the 808 revolution”; “Nothing sounds quite like an 808”; TR-8, TR-08 and TR-1000 product pages; TR-08 press release (8 August 2017).
- Wikipedia, “Roland TR-808”; Sonic State, TR-8 review (14 February 2014).
Checked September 2026.
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