Pioneer of digital music
Born: February 7 1930;
Died: April 1, 2017
IKUTARO Kakehashi, who has died aged 87, was a Japanese engineer who pioneered digital music and founded the synthesiser giant Roland.
He founded Roland in 1972, and the company's first product was the rhythm machine. Since then, Roland instruments have appeared on the stage of top artists from Lady Gaga to Omar Hakim and had a significant impact on shaping the sound of electronic, hip hop and dance music.
Born in Japan in 1930, Kakehashi was drawn to engineering from a young age and built his own shortwave radios while in high school during the Second World War.
After the war, he started a clock and watch repair business before moving into radio repair and then experimenting with making musical instruments. By the 1960s, his shop was making electric organs.
He founded Roland in Osaka in 1972 and his first product was the TR-77 rhythm box. The following year, he introduced the first compact synthesizer and went on to offer an assortment of keyboards, guitars, drums, amplifiers and speakers.
As dance music spread, Roland's synthesizers became ubiquitous. "Music literally would not be what it is today without Mr Kakehashi," said Steven Fisher, now at Yamaha and a former employee at Roland, who worked with Kakehashi on electronic percussion and drum products.
Kakehashi always stressed that the advent of electronic music was not at odds with acoustic instruments, or that it was trying to undermine the rich legacy of music.
But amplification held great potential, including the possibility to create various speakers as well as present music to far larger audiences, like the hundreds at concert halls, not the previous dozens in old-style chamber settings, he said.
One Roland product he liked to show off was a guitar that was a collaboration with Fender, which could not only play Stratocaster riffs but also the sounds of an acoustic guitar, sitar and 12-string acoustic guitar, as well as instantly drop octaves and distort notes.
"The options have widened," Kakehashi said of electronic music at a Roland seminar in 2012. "I believe the ways of musical expression have expanded."
Kakehashi received a Grammy in 2013 for developing Midi, or Musical Instrumental Digital Interface, which digitally connects instruments.
Upon receiving the Grammy, Kakehashi noted how quickly the years had passed since the debut of the Midi protocol in 1983.
"It is my great pleasure that Midi played a significant role in their prevalence," he said at the time. "This year's Technical Grammy Award is the result of the co-operation by the companies who worked towards the same dream - growth of electronic musical instruments."
His death was announced by ATV, a company Kakehashi founded in 2013 after he left Roland.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here