Preview: LinnDrum II

LinnDrum II is a drum machine that’s currently in development. Following on my (Roger's) early drum machine products like the LM1-1 Drum Computer, LinnDrum and Linn9000, as well as the MPC product line I originally designed for Akai, the goal of LinnDrum II is be a new musical instrument for the real-time creation and improvisation of beat-oriented music, both in live performance and in the studio.

Originally conceived as a collaboration with Dave Smith, along the way we discovered that Dave’s customers and mine wanted different products and it would be too expensive to make a product that met the needs of both. So it’s going to be a Roger Linn Design product, but still contains many benefits of Dave’s earlier involvement.

There’s still plenty of work for my small company to do, but when we’re closer to release we’ll be posting more information on this page. For now, I can only say that while it won’t be an analog product it will introduce a number of creative and fun ways to create beats, and will provide a very high degree of hands-on, real-time control of beat and sound manipulation in an intuitive way designed to guide new and surprising ideas from the musician’s head with very little effort. And I suspect most people will find the price less than they were expecting. Please hold your questions for now; as more information is available, I’ll post it here and significant updates will be sent to our LinnDrum II Email List.

I recognize that this product has been in development for a while now. However, the fun for me in designing a product is to try to implement it in a new way that surprises and delights, and for better or worse I tend to take my time getting the details right. Thanks for your patience.

- Roger Linn

Updated: May 14, 2010

For your amusement, here are some notable steps in the evolution of the LinnDrum II design. Click on the pictures for bigger pictures:

Third design:

Second design:

First design: