Roland TR-505 | Tight Drums & Synthpop - In depth tutorial

video upload by Espen Kraft

"The Roland TR-505 drum machine from 1986. Undervalued and underestimated. If you want to make a tight, slick drum pattern in 80s synthpop style, this has the perfect kick and snare for the job.

With a little bit of compression and EQ you will have a super tight and punchy back bone for the rest of your arrangement. The kick of the 505 is more suited to digital recording and streaming playback than the 707's kick or the Linndrum kick.

The TR-505 was released as an entry level drum machine and it was always overshadowed by the TR-707 popping up at around the same time, and the TR-909 released a little before, but people like Vince Clarke hailed the 505's kick as perfect for synthpop.

Since the TR-505 doesn't have individual outputs it's necessary to record the individual sounds and use them in the DAW for full control. In the 80s we did all of this in the sampler and used that's individual outputs routing the sounds to the mixer.

The rest of the instruments and sounds were not the focus of this video, but it's important to have some reference tracks against the drums.

On my Patreon page you can download all the individual drum sounds from the 505, from my personal recordings of it AND the kick and snare processed as you hear them in this video.

Find my music here:
Bandcamp: https://espenkraft.bandcamp.com/

00:00 Intro and history of the TR-505
00:38 Final sound and mix we're going for
02:13 Percussion and dotted delays
08:39 Hi-Hats and high pass filtering
09:52 Snare and compression
13:00 Snare EQ
14:35 Kick EQ
16:01 Toms
18:08 Crash
19:22 Getting the balance right
21:35 The TR-505 is underestimated / Final thoughts"