Roger Curtis Linn is an American designer of electronic musical instruments and equipment.
Linn Electronics
In 1979, Roger Linn and Alex Moffett
founded
Linn Moffett Electronics, soon renamed Linn Electronics, to develop Linn's design for a
drum machine that used samples. It would be called LM-1 for Linn/Moffett/1. Moffett left the company in 1982. Linn used his new drum machine and performed with
Leon Russell on his album Life and Love in 1979.
LM-1
In 1980, Roger Linn released the LM-1 Drum Computer. It was one of the first programmable drum machines and the first to use samples of acoustic drums. Linn wanted a machine that would produce more realistic sounds and offer more than preset patterns.
The LM-1 became a staple of 1980s pop music and helped establish drum machines as credible tools.
It appeared on records by artists including the Human League,
Gary Numan,
Mecano, Icehouse,
Michael Jackson, Queen, Tears For Fears and particularly Prince.
LinnDrum
In 1982, Linn released the cheaper and more stable
LinnDrum, which was a commercial success.
It was cheaper and more widely produced than his first drum machine, the Linn LM-1,.
It was used by artists and producers including
Trevor Horn,
,
Naked Eyes, Stock Aitken Waterman,
and
Justin Hayward.
Linn 9000
In 1984 Linn released the Linn 9000 as the successor to the LinnDrum. It was the first integrated digital
drum machine and
MIDI Music sequencer. The 9000 had innovative features, like dynamic sensitive rubber pads,
and would influence many future
drum machine designs.
But chronic software bugs
led to a reputation for unreliability and contributed to the eventual demise of the company.
The 9000 can be heard on
Michael Jackson's 1987 album,
Bad, on the cuts such as "Bad" and "
Liberian Girl".
LinnSequencer
In 1985, Linn released the
LinnSequencer, a
rack mount 32 track hardware
MIDI Music sequencer. It used the same flawed operating system used in the Linn 9000.
As a result, the machine earned a reputation for unreliability.
LinnDrum Midistudio
In January 1986, Linn debuted the LinnDrum Midistudio at the
NAMM Show as the successor to the Linn 9000. The Midistudio is essentially a rack mount version of the Linn 9000 with some improvements.
It used the same flawed operating system used in the Linn 9000.
It never went into production because Linn Electronics went out of business the following month.
Similarities between the LinnDrum Midistudio and the Akai MPC series lead some to perceive a family resemblance.
Legacy
Linn Electronics went out of business in February 1986.
Forat Electronics purchased their remaining assets,
manufactured and sold the
Forat F9000 and
LinnSequencer until 1994 and provide service, sounds, customization and upgrades for the entire Linn Electronics line.
The LM-1, LinnDrum and Linn 9000 became synonymous with the music of the 1980s. The Linn 9000 and LinnDrum Midistudio pioneered the concept of the Music Production Center or
MPC.
Akai MPC
After Linn Electronics, Linn collaborated with the Japanese company
Akai to design the MPC60, an integrated sampler, drum machine and MIDI
Music sequencer released in 1988.
According to Linn, "The was a good fit because Akai needed a creative designer with ideas and I didn't want to do sales, marketing, finance or manufacturing, all of which Akai was very good at."
The MPC60 was followed by the MPC60 MkII and the MPC3000.
Linn aimed to design an affordable user-friendly instrument that did not require extensive musical knowledge or studio equipment to use.
Linn left Akai after the company went out of business and its assets were purchased by Numark. According to Linn, the new organization was led by "a very unscrupulous fellow ... he immediately stopped my royalty payments, refused to take my calls and had his lawyer send me threatening letters. I checked around and learned that he has a reputation of being a real bastard, so given that challenging him would have been long and expensive, I let it go."
Roger Linn Design
In 2001 Roger Linn founded a new company, Roger Linn Design. The company's first product offering was the AdrenaLinn, with the LinnStrument music performance controller added later.
AdrenaLinn
The AdrenaLinn is a digital multi-effects unit with a drum machine and amp modeler all in one, designed by Roger Linn with some help from Dave Smith (credited with helping to conceive
MIDI) and Tom Oberheim (designer of early analog synthesizers). Most notably, unlike other guitar pedals, the AdrenaLinn specializes in beat-synced effects, including modulation and delay but also a sequencer that provides looped patterns of filtered tones, all moving in sync to its internal drum machine or to midi. The drum section can also be affected by the
Digital filter section, allowing dance-style beats. Other unusual aspects of this pedal include note-triggered filter effects such as auto-wah, simulated talk box and guitar synthesizer sounds. The AdrenaLinn technology was also the basis of Roger Linn's partnership with
M-Audio to create the Black Box guitar multi-effect and recording unit.
The AdrenaLinn can be heard on the following records (among many others):
The AdrenaLinn was followed-up with the AdrenaLinn II and AdrenaLinn III.
LinnDrum II
Roger Linn and Dave Smith announced co-development of a drum machine product, originally to be called BoomChik, but changed to LinnDrum II in December 2007, a reference to one of Linn's early popular drum machines: the
LinnDrum. The LinnDrum II was renamed the Tempest, and co-released by Roger Linn Designs and Dave Smith Instruments in 2011. Unlike Linn's previous digital drum machines, the Tempest was an analog drum machine.
LinnStrument
In late 2014, after several years of development, Linn released the LinnStrument, a music performance controller with 3D note expression. The grid based MIDI controller, playable with one or two hands, is velocity sensitive, but also senses three dimensions per finger, polyphonically. It can employ MPE, thereby using a full MIDI channel per note. Two versions are available, the larger original
LinnStrument as well as the smaller
LinnStrument 128.
Almost the entire surface of the controller is covered by its 8 by 25 (or 8 by 16 in the case of the LinnStrument 128) grid. The fingertip-sized fields are each able to measure and transmit velocity, aftertouch, x-position relative to the entire row (or any subset thereof), y-position within a field, as well as release velocity.
The LinnStrument has several additional features, such as an arpeggiator, a velocity-sensitive step sequencer as well as freely assignable virtual MIDI faders. It is USB-powered and can communicate via USB or 5-pin MIDI.
Music career
Roger Linn has had a level of songwriting success, penning hits ("Promises",
Eric Clapton 1979; "Quittin' Time", Lou Ann Barton 1986, Mary Chapin Carpenter 1991, Amy Bishop 2009), and having toured as a guitarist with the pianist/songwriter
Leon Russell in the 1970s at age 21.
In 2011 Roger was awarded a Grammy Award for Lifetime Technical Achievement, recognizing his many contributions to the music recording industry.
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