Roland MC8

Roland's MC8 began electronic music's move away from the limited compositional scope of the analogue sequencer, and left its stamp on some of the seminal pop of the 1980s. Chris & Cosey's Chris Carter, a pioneering MC8 user himself, fires up the 20 candles on the MC8's birthday cake...

This year is the 20th anniversary of what many regard as a landmark in sequencer history, for 1977 was the year in which Roland announced the birth of the pioneering grandfather of the MicroComposer family, the MC8. The advertising byline read A new concept of control for a new era in electronic music composition.

The MC8 wasn't the first digital/analogue sequencer available for the '70s electronic musician: companies such as Emu, EMS and Oberheim also had sequencers available. But the MC8 and its descendants arguably had more impact on electronic music‑making in the 1970s and 1980s than any other family of sequencers. The introduction of the MC8 also saw the beginning of an inevitable move away from the prevalent 'running light' 12‑step analogue sequencers from Moog, ARP, and Roland themselves. While analogue sequencers were definitely sexier looking, especially on stage, they were severely limited in the memory department.

The Birth Of The Cool

First let me enlighten you as to how this '70s electro‑icon came into being. In 1971 Canadian Ralph Dyck developed a prototype single‑channel digital sequencer built from discrete components based on TTL logic circuits. Note information, such as pitch, step time, and gate time was entered using a 10‑key calculator keyboard, and up to 1024 notes could be recorded. Unfortunately, he couldn't find an American company interested enough to manufacture it. Then, in 1976, Roland president Ikutaro Kakehashi saw the prototype and decided to manufacture a sequencer based on Dyck's ideas — but featuring more memory and eight channels, and incorporating what was then a state‑of‑the‑art 8080A microprocessor. The MC8 was born.

It's built like a tank, to almost military specification, and is physically quite imposing, consisting of two separate units: the main MC8 unit and the MC8 Interface, connected together at the rear by a substantial umbilical cord with massive 60‑pin plugs at either end. The main unit has a large, single‑line, 12‑digit red LED display, 30 push buttons for navigating through the various modes, a rotary tempo control, and a 10‑key, calculator‑style keypad for entering data. The interface unit features two DIN sockets and no fewer than 22 quarter‑inch jack sockets for outputting gates, control voltages and MPX signals (see the glossary for an explanation of this), two jack sockets for inputting CV and gate signals, three rotary controls, and a switch for selecting output channels and portamento. Fourteen small LEDs give a visual indication of the state of the gate and MPX outputs, and there's a toggle switch on the rear to select positive or negative gate polarity.

Both units are finished in a beige and grey livery with fetching wooden end‑cheeks. With both units placed side by side (and neither can be used without the other) the MicroComposer measures 27" wide by 15" deep, is 6" high, and weighs in at a very hefty 35lb. Portable it is not.

Interfacing on the MC8 is pretty comprehensive, with CV and gate signals available for all eight channels and a separate MPX gate output available on channels 1‑6. Outputs for channel 1 are also available via a 6‑pin DIN socket, with another, switchable DIN socket for channels 2‑8. These DIN sockets are compatible with the Roland System 700 or System 100M modular synthesizers. On the rear of the main unit are quarter‑inch jack sockets for Remote Start/Stop, Tape Memory Dump/Load, and Sync In/Out. On a few MC8s there's also a Sync 24 DIN output socket (see 'It's in the Sync' box).

Music By Numbers

The instruction manual for the MC8 is a huge tome an inch thick, weighing over 2lb and full of terminology left over from 1960s computer programming. You are expected to understand instructions like: 'Establish an Address' and 'Set a Measure End Flag' but I won't go into detail about how you program the MC8, as it could take up most of this article and would be pretty boring. Examples are included for programming a Brahms waltz, a mambo rhythm, 'Yesterday', and 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen', and blank programming sheets full of grids are provided, for you to work out your own songs on.

Once you get your head around the concept of writing music by tapping out numbers on a calculator keyboard, the MC8 isn't especially difficult to use. However, when you find that you have to tap out hundreds of notes just to programme a four‑minute song, things get pretty tedious, and you find yourself using the copy function an awful lot. Data must be entered in a very specific order, or the display tells you in no uncertain terms that the MC8 is unhappy by flashing on and off. This is called the Error function. To quote the (sometimes hilarious) manual: 'The Error function is activated whenever you do something which is beyond the capabilities or comprehension of the MicroComposer". Intuitive is not a word you could use to describe working with the MC8.

It's slightly easier to enter notes if you connect a keyboard with CV and gate outputs to the MC8 Interface unit, and play notes in from that. You're also supposed to be able to record from a CV keyboard in real time, but the MC8 insists on imposing its own idea of timing onto whatever is recorded. Playback can speed up or slow down, with notes randomly getting longer and shorter. Only the pitch bears any relation to your input, and the only way of quantising is to edit notes individually. Transposing notes is also very difficult, as — strange though it may seem — there's no transpose function and absolutely no way to transpose parts while you're in edit mode, other than stepping through each note and entering a new amount with the keypad. You could always use the transpose function on your CV synth keyboard or modules, but that would transpose everything.

The MC8 was one of the first sequencers to adopt the technique of cutting and pasting note information from one location to another, and although it's pretty rudimentary, you can perform basic copy, insert and delete functions across all eight tracks. This technique becomes an essential procedure for most users. Of course, we take the cut‑and‑paste approach to song construction pretty much for granted these days, but it was quite an innovative feature at the time.

Remember Me?

Original MC8s with only 4k of RAM have the capacity to hold approximately 1100 notes. This was pretty meagre even in 1977, so an upgrade was offered by Roland, which took the total capacity to 16k. On later models 16k was included as standard, which gave enough memory for about 5300 notes. Using the MPX outputs doesn't affect the memory that much, but using all eight CVs and gates simultaneously can fill up the RAM pretty fast, and when its memory approaches maximum programming, the MC8 tends to get sluggish, and lock‑ups sometimes occur. However, oddly enough, if you assign more than one CV to a single channel (that is, four CVs to one gate output) then more than 10,000 notes are possible. Hmmm...

Backing up data is a pain — very slow, and probably the cause of most complaints from MC8 users. A good‑quality cassette machine is essential (preferably one optimised for data recording) and premium‑quality cassettes are a must. Once you've set up your input and output levels, the process of dumping and verifying can begin. On average, a four‑minute song using four channels and MPX outputs can take in excess of 10 minutes to save and another 10 minutes to verify. If you're in a rush you can dispense with verifying the data, but sure as eggs is eggs you can bet that it will refuse to load up the next time you try. And what happens if the verify fails? You spend another 20 minutes going through the whole bloody process again!

Hands On

Understandably, the MC8 doesn't excel at playing (or recording) fancy stuff like keyboard solos and lead lines. What it does do exceptionally well is tight multitrack sequencing, bass lines and rhythm patterns, frequently all at once. With the benefit of eight separate CV/gate channels, the MC8 can produce very complex polyrhythmic sequences with comparative ease, and you can also manage complex chords without a problem (assuming your synth is multi‑voiced) by assigning multiple CVs to one channel. One of its best features, shared by many sequencers and drum machines, is its rock‑solid timing. In full flow with all 14 channels outputting signals, it always manages to steam along without taking a breath.

The only time the MC8's timing does fluctuate is when the unit is synchronised to tape and its timing is governed by the fluctuations and variations of a tape machine. Synchronising to tape is achieved with an FSK tone, which means always having to start the tape machine from the beginning to achieve proper sync — very irritating. In 1977 many studios were still using 8‑ and 16‑track tape machines, and the MC8 allowed another 14 channels of MicroComposer‑controllable instruments (synths and drum modules) to be synchronised in return for the sacrifice of only one tape channel for the sync tone (see the 'It's in the Sync' box). Although Roland probably had the System 700 synthesizer in mind when they designed the MC8, it's quite content driving much smaller keyboards and synths. I've always used an evolving System 100M and various Roland SH‑series synths with my MC8, but it is just as happy connected to ARP, Oberheim, Prophet and Moog equipment.

A unique feature for the time was the inclusion on the MC8 of programmable tempo which could vary from note to note if needed. Other innovations included a real‑time display showing minutes and seconds, and a 'Total Time' button. When this mode is used, the MC8 can calculate the length of a song for you — but, more interestingly, if you adjust the tempo control the MC8 will recalculate the length of the song until you find the length you want, with accuracy to a tenth of a second — ideal for film and TV work. This was a pretty innovative use of technology at the time, and it's easy to see why it caused such excitement.

Who's Who?

For classic examples of outstanding MC8 programming, just listen to early 1980s albums by electronic bands such as Kraftwerk (The Man Machine), Human League (Dare), and Landscape (From the Tea Rooms of Mars). Other notable users of the time were myself and Cosey, Tangerine Dream, producer Martin Rushent (Altered Images, Pete Shelley, Human League), Hans Zimmer, Toto, Tomita and Suzanne Ciani, the last pair employing assistants to enter note numbers for them! A number of artists used multiple‑MicroComposer setups. Tomita used at least two, one being the first model off the production line, plus an MC4. Toto used three, each one extensively modified by the original designer Ralf Dyck. Hans Zimmer used three, one for each of his various Moog and Roland modular systems, while Martin Rushent used an MC8 and an MC4.

Happy Birthday

A lot of people (OK, 300) have sweated blood over and cursed this machine through the years — I know I have. But even with the ever‑present lure of the mouse and monitor, I often find myself strangely drawn to the MC8. These days I tend to program it to play some fab sequences or bass lines, leave a DAT in record and then sample from DAT later, but that's another story. My MC8 has made an appearance on at least half of the 30 or so albums and singles I've released, the most recent being last year. Sure, it's beginning to show its age now, but until it actually packs up I'll continue to go back to it.

All together now... "Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you..."