Akai MPC60 Revisited

Join us as we travel back in time to see how the story of one of the most important machines in modern music began.

Most of us would be happy enough to have one famous musical invention to our name, but some people have produced so many that they almost seem run‑of‑the‑mill. Roger Linn is a case in point. Products he’s created have helped define the sounds of genres and, arguably, even entire periods in popular music. And none has been more influential than the original grid‑based sampling beatbox, the Akai MPC60.

The LM‑1

Roger Linn was born in California in the 1950s. Unlike many of his later peers, Linn didn’t have any formal training with electronics or engineering, and instead was a musician who taught himself what he needed to know in order to satisfy his sonic curiosities. In the early days, he’d open guitar pedals and tweak and modify them to produce different flavours of effect.

A keen instrumentalist and songwriter, at only 21 Linn landed a gig as a touring guitarist for Leon Russell. Linn subsequently managed to persuade Russell to use the fruits of his career to buy a synthesizer for use in the studio, and Russell wound up purchasing a modular system from a fledgling company called E‑mu Systems. Experimenting with this new technology, the ability to use the E‑mu’s sequencer to modulate its filter as external audio ran through it was particularly compelling to Linn.

Whilst working with Russell, Linn also first experienced a musician using a rhythm machine to lay down a beat that the band would record to. This was done partly for timing, but also because it meant that if Russell then wanted to re‑record the drums or something else rhythmic, there would be a rock‑solid timing reference to work from.

This ability to create drums artificially was interesting to Linn as it was an ingredient he struggled to produce for his own demo recordings, having never learned to play them himself. However, there were two problems: firstly, the machines were all based around preset, factory rhythms and couldn’t be programmed, (with a couple of exceptions — see the ‘Outliers’ box), and secondly, the analogue drum emulations of the day weren’t known for their realistic sound.

Roger Linn.Setting out to solve the first problem, in 1977 Linn became competent with computing and built a programmable drum machine and sequencer using a COMPAL‑80 and a Frankensteined sound board from a Roland rhythm unit. The sequencer could then control a synthesizer via CV and gate to boot. This custom machine was used on Leon Russell’s album Life & Love, which Linn co‑produced, engineered and provided guitar for.

Next came the second problem. Analogue drum machines that employed oscillators, noise generators and envelopes sounded like alien interpretations of acoustic drums, rather than the real thing. Whilst the sounds are steeped in nostalgia, charm and history nowadays, at the time manufacturers were looking for a more realistic solution. Fatefully, it was Linn who got there first because, fortuitously, around this time, it was becoming possible to record digital audio at a price that might just be within the realms of practicality from a commercial perspective. Whilst RAM was highly expensive, drum sounds were inherently short and were therefore a perfect, skinny contender for a product that was loaded with digital recordings of real instruments (although longer cymbal sounds would have to wait on the sidelines for the time being).

Linn booked session drummer Art Wood into a studio and captured the sounds he’d need for his new machine. At 28kHz and 8‑bit, the resulting lo‑fi recordings were raw and crunchy, but, crucially, they were a huge breakthrough for the time. Nestled into a sleek chassis with hands‑on controls and extremely useful new features such as tap recording, auto‑correct, adjustable swing, pattern chaining and more, the resulting LM‑1 was an instant hit, despite having a $5000 price tag upon its release in 1979. Once the LM‑1 was out, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the drum palette of popular music was changed forever, and despite there only being around 500 units produced, the LM‑1 was heard on the hits of the Human League, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, Queen, Prince and Vangelis amongst many, many others, and remains a prized possession to those who own them.

With the success of the LM‑1 in the bag competitors were working hard to try to catch up. With the technology improving and coming down in price, it was clear there needed to be a successor, and that came in 1982. The first instrument had used the initials ‘LM’ because the company had been founded by Roger Linn and Alex Moffet. However, Moffet departed in the early ’80s and so the successor was simply titled the LinnDrum, rather than LM‑2. With a smaller profile, better fidelity, and more features and sounds, the LinnDrum went on to become one of the most famous drum machines of all time. With the LinnDrum outselling the LM‑1 at almost 10:1, if a song was in the charts in the ’80s, the chances are that there was a LinnDrum on it. It would take so long to list all the artists that used the LinnDrum that it would dominate this article, so probably the best way to sum it up is by mentioning the fact that there is an archive on the Internet that lists songs that contain...