Roger Linn: The King of Drum Machines

Описание: This is the story of Roger Linn, a guitarist from Los Angeles whose innovative sample based drum machines changed the sound of music forever.

Special thanks to Roger himself for featuring my video in the September Linnstrument newsletter (https://myemail.constantcontact.com/L...) and on his website (https://www.rogerlinndesign.com).

I first learned about Roger a few years ago while making a film called “The History of Sampling in Music” (here's a convenient link:    • The History of Sampling in Music  ). While I didn’t know anything about Roger at the time, I was astounded to learn that he had created both the LinnDrum and the MPC, which shaped the punchy robotic drums of 80s pop music and the grungy experimental grooves of 90s hip-hop respectively. I did a quick bit of research about him for my video, but didn’t really dig much deeper than that… However, a few months ago I decided to rewatch my old project, which reignited my interest in Roger’s story and gave me the idea for this video.

Like my previous project, I’d initially planned to write a script and do a voice-over, but after discovering the assortment of recorded interviews that Roger has already appeared in, I realised that I could just chop them up and have Roger tell his own story. I thought “hey that sounds pretty cool, how hard could it be?”

Well, let’s just say I’m probably never going to do something like this again. I did enjoy making this and I am proud of it, but if I had just done a voice-over not only would it have been easier to make, but I also could’ve included a lot information without it feeling incredibly clunky. The initial cut was about 26 minutes, but I cut out loads of stuff for the sake of pacing and trying to stick to narrative beats. Roger is a fascinating guy with a lot of great anecdotes though, so if you enjoyed this video then I highly recommend you seek out some of the podcasts/interviews he’s done over the years.

I planned on making all the music for this film myself, but decided it would be better to use music that relates to Roger in some way (for example, he co-wrote “Promises” by Eric Clapton and “Quittin’ Time” by Mary Chapin Carpenter, and first used the LM-1 Drum Computer on the Leon Russell album “Life & Love” which featured the track “One More Love Song”.) I salvaged one of these demo tracks for the credits, but you can listen it and a few more scrapped tracks here:
  / rltkodm-credits-and-demo-music  

Since you’ve read this far, here’s a few bonus Roger facts that got cut out of the video:

The LM-1 was featured on the best selling album of all time - “Thriller” by Micheal Jackson, as well as other early 80s hits like “Maneater” by Hall & Oates, “Valerie” by Steve Winwood, and for some reason - the original 1983 Thomas the Tank Engine theme song.

Roger hired his friend, a professional session drummer called Art Wood, to record most of the sounds on the LM-1. They set up the kit in Roger’s closet, recording each of the drums one at a time… then called it a day. Given the popularity of the songs featuring these recordings - Art Wood is technically one of most prominently featured drummers of all time.

And here's two bonus facts about this video:

The title "The King of Drum Machines" is a quote from the father of MIDI - Dave Smith, when he spoke about Roger and the Tempest drum machine (which they built together) on a Sweetwater panel in 2015. Here's a link:    • The Inventors of Synth (Roger Linn, Dave S...  

This video was released on Roger’s 70th birthday.

I hope you enjoy it!