￥Forgotten Keys FK12 Roland CompuRhythm CR-8000 KONTAKT | 30.5 MB

The Roland CompuRhythm CR-8000 was released in 1980 and was the successor to the CR-78. The sound generation was analogue still but advances had been made to some sounds. The cymbals for example were more metallic sounding, similar in fact to the Korg KR-55/KR-55B models. The famous Roland TR-808 style hand-clap and cowbell sounds saw an appearance along with tom-toms that were used in the intro/fill-in patterns. Both the main patterns and the intro/fill-in patterns were now programmable. The arranger section provided real-time control over the preset rhythms by adding additional sounds and changing the patterns of others, and there was a mixer section to balance the sounds to your liking.

Sounds
All 14 sounds of the CR-8000 have been carefully sampled 8 times and are picked at random within Kontakt. All sounds that respond to the accent control have been sampled at 7 different accent levels. It would have been easy to just use the same sample and adjust the volume on accented beats, but accent has an affect on the sound other than just changing the volume, and the idea is to get as close to the original as possible. When playing the sounds from a keyboard or a DAW sequencer, the accent levels are assigned to velocity allowing all 7 levels to be accessed by each sound individually.

A Mytek Stereo96 ADC was used for the recordings and great care was taken to achieve the best signal to noise ratio. The sounds are in 24-bit 44.1KHz wav format.

Rhythms
The FK12 contains re-creations of all the preset rhythms, intros and fill-ins of the CR-8000. The programmability features have also been included. As is always the case with Forgotten Keys drum machine re-creations, the rhythms are sequenced patterns that trigger the appropriate sound at the appropriate time, much in the same way as a real drum machine. This allows for far greater flexibility in that you can adjust parameters for individual sounds, change the tempo without any artefacts and combine rhythms without creating volume or phasing problems.