Hands-on with Roland's TR-1000: How to use sequencing, sampling, Morph and more

Unveiled earlier this month, Roland’s TR-1000 was always going to cause a stir. This flagship drum machine sits at the top of Roland’s line-up, with a top-end price to match. It’s the first Roland drum machine in more than 40 years to feature analogue sounds, with 16 circuits that mimic those of the iconic TR-808 and TR-909.

To focus solely on the TR-1000’s analogue elements would miss a lot of its highlights though. Alongside these sounds, Roland’s behemoth also features sampling, flexible effects, digital percussion sounds and a well-equipped, creative sequencer.

In our video, we explore the basics of the TR-1000 workflow and explain a few of our favourite creative features, including resampling, timestretching, the Morph crossfader and the master effects.

In this video, we’re using the TR-1000 alongside Erica Synths’ Bassline synth. The TR-1000 is sending MIDI clock to the Bassline sequencer, and the Bassline is routed into the TR-1000’s rear panel input and routed through the Master FX unit.

In this video:
01:40 – Sequencing basics
07:20 – Resampling a drum loop
19:17 – Drum layers
23:05 – Sub steps and probability
24:52 – FX routing
28:45 – Morph
32:23 – Variations and fills