It's been roughly five years since Roger Linn unleashed the first digitally sampled programmable drum machine on the unsuspecting world. In the interim, many more drum machines have been produced by all sorts of different companies. I counted 20 without actually taxing my memory banks. However, even if the competition's equipment is as good, or perhaps better than LM1 or Linndrum, the product still has the name and image. This holds good for Simmons too and, of course, Hoover; the manufacturers' reputation proceeds it. The music trade has known of the imminent arrival of the latest Linn for a year or so, but the moment of truth has finally arrived and I went to Syco's showrooms to witness what I can only describe as an amazing piece of technology. To describe it as a drum machine is akin to comparing a mainframe computer to an arcade game. They use the same technology but there the similarity ends. You see, this particular Linn is not just a machine to output drum sounds and store them, it is capable of storing any sounds which are produced by synthesizers too. We will discuss this MIDI feature at much greater length later on. For the moment though, we'll concentrate on the drum machine side of the 9000.

It resembles as far as I'm concerned one of the latest British Telecom switchboards. It's wedge shaped with all of its press buttons and things on the sloping top, and with all its jack-sockets on the thickest edge; I suppose it weighs as much as the Linndrum.

To the left hand side of the control panel are a series of mini faders. The top ones are simply for panning the voices left and right, the next row has firstly a master volume slider and then individual controls (also faders). Linn thoughtfully fit a couple of auxiliary sliders so that any signal the 9000 is receiving from outside itself may also be controlled. Below these we have a button for manual hi hat and another fader to control its decay. Next to these are the voice buttons which are rubber, arranged in three rows, and just under an inch square. They are touch sensitive so the harder you 'touch'them, the louder their sound. The machine contains actual digitally sampled sounds for four toms, two ride cymbals, two crash, hi and lo congas, snare, side stick, tambourine, cabasa, clap and cowbell. Also included in these rows are erase, repeat and tap tempo. (This last feature will set the tempo which you desire; you might want your song to be exactly the same as something else.)

To the right of these are some smaller rectangular pushbuttons arranged in sections and two long vertical rows. The sections pertain to mode, record/edit, tempo, synth and drums. It's these which dictate exactly what the machine will do. (The top button in the second column is actually labelled 'Help' and if you get into any trouble it will patiently take you through what you should have done. Also in this row are 'cancel current operation' which does just that if you think you've messed up your manoeuvre, and 'memory status' which tells just how much memory (per cent) remains; it shows up in a very comprehensive form in the LCD to the right side of these buttons. There's also a 'sync input options' button which divides the pulse to allow it to mate with other machines; trigger outputs control to keyboards; 'command list'; 'footswitches' for remote record, repeat etc; 'trigger input assign' from external pads to programme from, say, a Simmons etc. One of the buttons is for tuning and once depressed will allow the volume faders to change the pitch of the voices individually. (This is very useful and works with devastating effect on the percussion instruments.) Even though the pads are touch-sensitive, their dynamics are adjustable from one to eight. The larger numbers are not so good from the point of view of real sensitivity (ie threshold and ceiling); the middle numbers appear to give the greatest range.

Yet another button will select a sequence and move to it (we'll discuss just how easy programming is in a paragraph or two). There's a 'click' button too which can resound as crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, and demi-semiquavers and also features a unique count in facility. Tempo changes are programmable and you may even have one bar at a different speed to the others around it. There's a 'screen edit' button which is utilised for step-time programming and erasure which works via the LCD screen. Insert, copy and merge are also very important for building songs.

Two more important buttons are shuffle which puts a gap between two beats and can be adjusted from zero to five — Like all the 9000 info this is listed on the screen. The other is a BPM counter which will divide each beat into 10 if you so desire, within this row is another button which is unique to drum machines. Its entitled 'custom drum sounds' and will allow you, with the acquisition of the software, to sample your own sounds.

The LCD display is to the right of all these controls and below this are controls to allow you to rewind, locate forward, record, stop and play. These work in much the same way as a tape recorder with an auto locate and will find the exact bar you wish to work on. This feature alone is a real time-saver. It's a drag to have to run the programme from the top each time you want to change something.

Programming

There's a numeric, 16 button calculator pad with an Alpha button to enable you to identify to a limited extent some of your 'songs', or rather your sequence (made up of smaller sequences). When you create a song you build sequences of, say, four bars and when satisfied with all these four bar sequences you store them as yet another sequence. This feature is intended to save memory and it's the computer itself which has to remember where to go next. For example, we programme in real or step time as many bars as we want. We can then repeat those bars or take bar one and make it bar five then add bar three until we've built a section which can be verse, chorus, intro or whatever. But, there's a loop feature too which will allow us to repeat, say, bars five, six, seven and eight as many times as we need. So, our complete song can be put together very, very swiftly. And if we want to change a specific bar or section it's very simple to press the work loop button which will allow only that portion to run while we do the business. 9000 has its own code to ensure it starts at the same place each time and knows where it is at any given time, but one of the optional extras from Linn is another board which will give you an SMPTE code which will enable you to lock-in to film codes and the like.

Like all drum machines this Linn has a quantize feature which will make sure your programmed beats end up where you intend them to be, rather than where you put them. It is able of working to a division factor of 196 which should be 'good enough for Jazz'. (It will quantize in threes to enable triplets to be programmed.)

I sincerely hope I haven't made it sound complicated, because it certainly isn't. Anyway, besides the machine memorising the positions of the beats and which voice was responsible, it will also store other nuances. Obviously volume is one of these (dynamically), so is pan, so it pitch, and so is tempo. For me one of the handiest features I've ever seen is incorporated in the 9000. It's the 'repeat' button which is situated next to the voice pads. You simply press this button and it will cause whichever pad you are touching to pulse in time with the quantisation. This is a very quick way of laying down regular hi hat or cymbal patterns but with the added nuances of the dynamic pads. This means if we adjust our pressure on the pad then the instrument we've entering into the memory will fluctuate dynamically too, just like a real drummer! It also means if we decide to use it on an actual drum voice we can very quickly create dynamic 'fills' and in perfect time.

Rhythm and tunes

I promised you earlier that I'd explain about 9000 being not just a drum machine, it also has a MIDI keyboard recording facility. All the controls for this are in those two rows I told you about in confidence earlier. They include Track number (there are 32 to choose from), MIDI channel number (16 to choose from), MIDI parameter and MIDI echo on.

Now, we join the 9000 to several keyboards via the MIDI channels and have the option to record on one of the 32 tracks. Our signal will be recorded with all the usual keyboard nuances such as: pitch bend, dynamics, patch, modulation, etc, etc. Once we've encapsulated one keyboard line in time with the drum-track we simply select another to record on. The machine will allow us to do this 32 times and doesn't mind how many notes we hold down at one time. So far so good. Because the programming facilities are exactly the same for both the drum and the synth, sections can do the same things with bars relative to their placement with keyboard parts too. This means that we can again take bar one and put it as bar five and repeat and loop and all those wonderful things. But, the synth side has a modulation button which will transpose your original key at whatever interval you wish. You will no doubt appreciate just how easy it is to compose certain kinds of songs with th is feature. Once you've set up your keyboard track totally and worked on changing parts in real or step time, you can now add your drum track in realtime by simply playing along. This was the part I found most fascinating because for once it meant that an automated drum part could 'breathe' with the track and respond to it. (Just like real life!) You could, of course, put the drum track down first if you wanted though. It is possible to programme up to 49 sequences for each section of the machine (drum or synth) and the quantize feature may be incorporated or not, as with the drum section. (When it was demonstrated to me it was very strange to hear just how the 9000 coped with positioning what had started out as very random arpeggios.)

I said that up to 49 sequences may be stored but if you need to you can dump these to cassette or floppy disk to leave the memory free. There's also an option to expand the machine's memory if you need to. As you no doubt know Linn produce interchangeable chips (50 at the last count) and these are reasonably easy to replace via the same sort of 'zifs' that Simmons use for SDS 1.

I have to say that I was extremely impressed with everything about the 9000. It's sounds were fine and aggressive too and its command facilities were excellent. As you can see from the heading all this technology does not come cheap, but you will save hours of studio time and you'll only need to write one very small hit to pay for the machine! Drum machines will never be the same again. As the French would no doubt say if you asked them, "plus ca change, plus ce n'est pas la meme chose." Hein?

LINN 9000 — RRP: £5169.25