Lawrence wrote: ↑May 09, 2025 9:37 pm
(...) Is there a band or prominent song that featured it back in the day?
Where to begin? And where to end? The SH-101 — famously not a commercial success at first for Roland, even considered a complete failure — was picked up by the dance producers of the late 80's an quickly became pretty much omnipresent in 80's > 90's house/trance/techno music. After that , it was picked up by artists such as Boards Of Canada (the band often credited with the rise of the SH-101 beyond EDM), Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Orbital, Massive Attack, The Knife, D.A.F., Portishead, Ozric Tentacles, the list goes on and on.
SH-101 connaisseurs also insist that it can be heard on various Prince and Madonna albums.
Maybe the most famous song that uses the SH-101 is "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics, though you have to listen very closely to hear it as most of its parts were overdubbed and/or combined with an Oberheim OB-X. Dave Stewart:
“The drum computer was triggering a sequence into the Roland SH‑101 that sounded powerful, and the Oberheim was more of a soft string sound that we managed to cut off so it made it more attacking. I think it was actually a preset, I don’t think we made the sound. The Roland is playing the original sequence and then Annie was playing in between it. ‘Sweet Dreams’ always confuses keyboard players when they try and play it, because they don’t realise it’s actually two keyboard parts that are playing completely different things.”
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