Roland DDR-30 Digital Drums 1985 | When Roland took on Simmons

video by Espen Kraft

"Roland DDR-30 from 1985. The brain in a digital drum system Roland designed to compete with Simmons at the time. Complete this came with a full set of drum pads to go along.

The DDR-30 is a digital/analog hybrid system. The 24 12-bit PCM samples are digital, but each of the 6 drum voices you can play at the same time are processed analog through the CEM 3360 VCA. Not untypical for the rest of the Roland MKS modules from this era.

All the 6 drum voices (kick, snare and 4 different toms) can be triggered from pads through the 6 trigger inputs on the back. Or the voices can be played over MIDI. The 6 voices also have their own individual outputs. There's also a mixed stereo output.

The demo song in the beginning is done with only the DDR-30 providing drums. The hi-hat is not part of the DDR-30, but since you can process the individual drum voices with no less than 16 parameteres each, I just took a snare and tuned it into a hat and overdubbed that part.

The rest of the demo song is Sequential Six-Trak for a LIVE solo while bass, poly synth and arps are coming from the Jupiter-8."