The BOSS DR-880 is the new Sheriff in town. In the old-school days, you had your drum machine, and it did drums and percussion — period. Now you have options. Not only does the DR-880 provide the drum/bass rhythmic essentials, it goes where no beatbox has gone before by letting you plug in a guitar or bass and jam along through its built-in COSM® amp models and multi-effects. Is that insanely cool or what?

As a songwriting tool, the DR-880 is unsurpassed in its class. To build your song, start by selecting among the 440 drum sounds onboard, or get organized using one of the 100 preset drum kits (no assembly required). If you feel like tweaking the drum kit, go for it! The DR-880 lets you get inside each sound and alter its pitch and envelope, and add effects. Some of the drum sounds in the DR-880 are brand-spankin’ new, some are from our famous SRX-series libraries, so you know you’ve got absolutely rippin’ sounds. From the pure, natural clean drums, to the full-on electronica and trance vibe, this DR can cover you from Ambient to Zydeco, no sweat. And you can mix and match sounds from different drum kits. Yes, make your own custom kits for your songs! Then store those drum kits in the User kit bank.

Hit the Groove Modify button to put a spin on your groove, and make it your own by letting the DR-880 inject some tasty ghost notes, fills, and a bit of shuffle if needed.

COMPOSE
The DR-880 is capable of housing 100 songs, approximately 30,000 notes-enough for at least one or two of your Grammy hit ideas. And don’t forget the bass sounds on the DR-880 — 40 different basses to choose from — electric, acoustic, and synthesized. Use the 20 velocity-sensitive pads to program your bass, drum, and percussion tracks and in real time. Or use the Step-Record function to input the notes one by one. You can even mix the volume of each part plus and your live guitar or bass, each with their own dedicated volume knobs. There’s MIDI in and out, and a USB port for connecting to a computer for MIDI I/O and for importing or exporting Standard MIDI Files.

So, now let’s get ridiculously simple here. Suppose you just want to program something like a ballad, or a rock groove, or a shuffling blues pattern, but you need it fast. “EZ Compose” to the rescue! 500 rhythm-plus-bass patterns are already there for you to use. In addition, you can have 500 patterns of your own stored in the DR-880.

Press the Chord Progression button to call up one of many types of chord structures and hit Play. You can tap tempo, change keys, or change drum kits and more on the fly!

GIG
Now that you’re cruzin’ along, let’s use the DR-880 on a gig — one-person band style. Set up your favorite patterns and guitar effects in one of the 80 “Favorites” locations. The Favorite setups are easily accessible in groups of four by buttons on the front panel. Hook the DR-880 up to an amp or a PA, press Play, and you’re on! Connect it to a Roland Micro Cube and you have the portable amplified show that fits in a backpack!

By the way, do you want your rhythm section to have a more live, professional sound, perhaps a much less machine-like overall tone? Welcome to the “Total Sound Control” section of the DR-880. Push the Total Sound Control button to enrich your sound with spatial characteristics that range from small room ambience to stadium atmosphere. It really sounds great.

If you have some flexibility with your live sound (or recording) rig, and would like to route the kick and snare to their own independent line outs, the DR-880 provides two extra outputs for this purpose, in addition to the master mix outs. A coaxial digital output connector provides connection to devices such as Roland’s digital near field monitors, or to a digital mixer, computer interface, etc. Two footswitch jacks are provides, one can be used with an optional EV-5 as a wah pedal even. There’s even a headphone jack for late-night jams.

For electric guitar, the DR-880 has a wicked batch of Drive/Amp models, plus multi-effects such as chorus/flanger/phaser, delay, and reverb. For acoustic guitar, plug into the Acoustic Processor, chorus, and reverb. For bass, fatten and punch up your tone with the assorted bass amp models, comp/limiter, chorus/flanger/phaser, and delay.

The DR-880 has amazing sound, ease of programming, and unprecedented versatility. Imagine how much music one player can make using a DR-880 — especially if you’re jamming bass or guitar live through the built in amp models and effects.