Linn LM-1, photo by Ekwatts at Wikimedia Commons
A drum machine, which was the first one designed by engineer Roger Linn. In the 1970s, Linn, an acquaintance of studio pianist Leon Russell, took note of Russell's method of using one of that era's drum machines so that he could record a piano part for a song to which the drums were to be added later, instead of having to hire a drummer to play a pattern to keep time to. In 1979, Linn ordered a board from Roland which was intended to be a replacement part for one of Roland's drum machines (probably the CR-78), and interfaced it to a microcomputer setup so that the computer could trigger the drum sounds that the board was capable of producing. He wrote software for the microcomputer that allowed desired drum patterns to be programmed, rather than using preset patterns as the drum machines of that era did. When Russell saw it, he asked Linn to build him one.
However, Linn was unhappy with the drum sounds from the Roland board, which used analog synthesis methods that had difficulty producing realistic drum sounds. Legend has it that Steve Pocaro, one of the keyboard players for the band Toto and a synthesizer enthusiast (he owned a large Polyfusion modular system) suggested to Linn that he should make digital recordings of real drum hits and use those instead. At that time, the cost of read-only memory was just coming down to the point where storing in memory samples of short drum hits was practical, so Linn did that and designed the LM-1 around those samples.
The LM-1 contained 18 sampled sounds, including kick, tom, snare, hi-hat, conga, cabasa and tambourine. (There were no cymbals -- not enough memory.) Sounds were recorded as 8-bit sampling at 30 KHz. The built-in pattern sequencer recorded in 16th-note intervals, and had the ability to "shuffle" every other quarter or eighth note to produce a more natural-sounding swing timing. Pitch could be varied for each sound, and some performers created interesting effects by pitching certain sounds up or down unnaturally. Patterns could be recorded in real time, using buttons on the unit to play the sounds, or in a step entry mode. The unit could store 100 patterns (which could be chained to make songs), and could load and store patters on cassette tape. There was no MIDI as it had not been invented yet; later, Linn developed a MIDI retrofit.
Introduced in 1980, the LM-1 was Linn Electronics' first product. At a cost of $5000 U.S., Linn only sold about 500 units; however, many of these were purchased by people who were influential in the music industry, and so the unit turned up on many hit records in the early 1980s. In the early part of the decade, microprocessor and memory capabilities advanced rapidly, and Linn dropped the LN-1 after only two years, to be replaced by the less expensive and more capable LinnDrum.