Audio Damage Tattoo - Manual (Page 25)

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Rimshot
Just like the real thing, rimshot sounds in drum machines usually find roles as rhythmic accents. Tattoo’s
rimshot comes directly from the clever circuits found in the TR-909. It’s a simple sound, short but sweet, and
hence has a simple complement of controls.
Tune
The Tune knob controls the overall pitch of the rimshot sound. Turn the knob clockwise and the sound goes
up in pitch.
HPF Frequency
Tattoo’s rimshot voice employs a high-pass filter to shave off some of the lower frequency components,
making the rimshot sound thinner and brighter. Turn this knob clockwise to emphasize the “click” portion of
the sound and reduce the body tone.
Clap
Put your hands together for electronic handclaps, everyone! Roland used more or less the same circuit for
claps in all of their early drum machines and Tattoo owes its claps to that circuit. It’s a fairly inflexible design
in that if you change its parameters much it ceases to sound anything like hand claps, or even what you
expect electronic hand claps to sound like. Hence Tattoo’s clap voice has only a couple of knobs.
Tone
The Tone knob controls how bright or dark the claps sound. Turn the knob clockwise and the claps become
brighter and crisper.
Reverb
Those clever engineers at Roland came up with an interesting idea: add a little bit of decaying noise to the
clap circuit and it sounds a bit like reverb. (Nowadays reverb is cheap and plentiful, but this was certainly not
the case when the TR-808 was under development, so people did what they could.) Tattoo’s
Reverb knob