TR-08 with Keyboard K-25m

horacewimp wrote:

Does anybody know if the TR-08 is compatible with the K-25m Keyboard - is there a connector just like on the boutique-synthesizers ? And if yes, can the drumsounds be played from the keyboard, maybe even velocity-sensitive?
I could not find any information about that - thank you !

The answer is YES. The TR-08 integrates perfectly with the K-25m, you can play the drum sounds from the keyboard WITH velocity/volume sensitivity.

Yeah, very cool - that's what i wanted to know, thank you very much !

OK - today i got my TR-08 and i made a test, connected it to a K-25m,
It is true, that some of the sounds can be played, but unfortunately not all - the congas and toms etc.. are outside of the K-25m keyrange , because they spreaded everything across more than the 2 octaves.
hm - it seems, that the TR-08 is not really meant to be used with the K-25m, otherwise all the sounds would have fitted into the range of the keyboard, the K-25m has more than enough keys for the TR-08s drumsounds.
it's more like a happy accident, that at least some sounds can be triggered from the K-25m.
But why does it have this connector on the back at all ??
very strange.
Or is there a solution, that i overlooked ?

horacewimp wrote:

OK - today i got my TR-08 and i made a test, connected it to a K-25m,
It is true, that some of the sounds can be played, but unfortunately not all - the congas and toms etc.. are outside of the K-25m keyrange , because they spreaded everything across more than the 2 octaves.
hm - it seems, that the TR-08 is not really meant to be used with the K-25m, otherwise all the sounds would have fitted into the range of the keyboard, the K-25m has more than enough keys for the TR-08s drumsounds.
it's more like a happy accident, that at least some sounds can be triggered from the K-25m.
But why does it have this connector on the back at all ??
very strange.
Or is there a solution, that i overlooked ?

Hmmm. Apologies if I steered you wrong on that. I'm guessing (only guessing since I'm not in my studio at the moment) that the drum sounds are mapped to the standard MIDI note numbers which were established back in the late 80's, so yes, some of them would be on the octave range of the K-25m, and some would fall outside. If this is true, the upside would be that drum patterns programmed for other machines set up to the standard would play "correctly" on the TR-08 (limited only by the sounds that are available).

Again, apologies if I gave you the wrong info!

It might be possibly to re-map the MIDI note numbers for the TR-08?
There is great info here which might be of help...

http://sunshine-jones.com/roland-boutique-tr-08-the-missing-manual-a-users-guide-to-the-tr-08-rhythm-composer/

no problem, that's not your fault :-)
it's not the biggest deal, as the TR-08 is a nice instrument even without the keyboard. But I'm waiting for an answer from Roland, because i want to know, why they attached the K-25m connector to this device and did not take care, that all the 16 Sounds can be played via the 25key keyboard ;-)

Here in Germany we say "Schildbürgerstreich" (can be translated to "foolish act" "piece of bungling" "cock-up"..)

Maybe it could be easily fixed in a firmware update, but i'm not too optimistic.

edit: just took a look at the TR-09 midi implementation - everything is perfect here, all the sounds fit into the keyrange of the K-25m - hm, why did they create such a stupid note mapping on he TR-08...