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Apr 2, 2017 · Kakehashi founded his first company, Ace Electronics, in Japan in the early 1960s, manufacturing a small rhythm box called the Ace Tone Rhythm Ace — a device pre-programmed with Waltz, Samba,...
- Drum Machines
- Solid State Amps
- Effects
- Midi
- Synths
It’s fitting that the man who started his career in electronics repairing watches would first make a splash in the music industry with a machines that keep time. Kakehashi’s earliest drum machines were rhythm boxes that played preset rhythm patterns at varying tempos, first with his Ace Tone brand, and then with Roland. He broke the mold in 1978 wi...
Roland was not the first company to produce a solid state amplifier or an amplifier with onboard effects. But Roland did produce one of the most popular solid state amps of all time: the Roland Jazz Chorus 120. Solid state amplifiers rarely get the time of day amidst the current tube amp craze, but per usual, Roland’s design hit that elusive mark o...
Roland’s first successes did not come with its drum machines, but with its effects. The RE–201 Space Echo tape echo, released in 1974, gives the Maestro Echoplex EP–3a run for its money as the most legendary echo unit. But that CE–1 Chorus was the real game changer. Granted, when it debuted as Boss's first pedal in 1976, it was not the first effect...
Arguably Kakehashi’s most profound effort was also one of his most mundane. At NAMM in 1982, Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits was trying to rally every synth builder in the industry behind a universal protocol for controlling synthesizers and other electronic instruments. American companies were by and large uninterested, as Smith recounts, in the...
Roland was early to the synthesizer game, with Kakehashi harboring a lifelong obsession with the electric organ. What resulted was an onslaught of synth designs, and an impressive number of home runs. Perhaps Roland’s most notable early synthesizer was the SH–3A, released in 1974. It was an audacious monosynth that offered both subtractive and addi...
Mar 14, 2017 · 14 Mar 2017. Ikutaro Kakehashi is a dreamer, who has been making products for musicians for 57 years. He founded Roland Corporation in 1972. The number of products and technological innovations from Roland during his watch is absolutely mind boggling.
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May 10, 2022 · Roland produces digital pianos for both domestic and professional use. The Kiyola KF-10 (2015) is an example of Roland collaborating with outside designers—in this case, Karimoku—to produce beautiful instruments for the home. This piano features in a previous article.
Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of Roland Corporation, created more than a successful business with a host of important innovations in electronic musical instruments; he has also paid tribute throughout his career to those who first inspired him. Mr. Kakehashi was born in Japan and formed Ace Electronics in 1964 with the goal of improving the ele...
Jun 23, 2017 · The man behind Roland Corp. made not only landmarks in electronic instrumentation but also helped to develop the universal landscape for music production as we know it. As someone with no formal musical training, Kakehashi was intent on making musical instruments for those like himself.
He founded Roland in 1972 and was involved in the development of various influential electronic instruments, such as the TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines and the TB-303 and Juno-60 synthesizers, in addition to Boss guitar amplifiers and effects pedals.
