Ikutaro Kakehashi

Ikutaro Kakehashi (梯 郁太郎), also known by the nickname Taro, was a Japanese engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur.

He founded the musical instrument manufacturers Ace Tone, Roland Corporation, and Boss Corporation, and the audiovisual electronics company ATV Corporation.

Kakehashi was born on 7 February 1930 in Osaka, Japan.

His parents died of tuberculosis during his early childhood, and he was raised by his grandparents.

Much of his childhood was spent studying electrical engineering and working in the Hitachi shipyards of Osaka.

During World War II, with no music lessons, Kakehashi became interested in radio as a way of listening to music, and his home was destroyed by American bombing.

Following the war, in 1946, he failed to get into a university on health grounds, and moved to the southern island of Kyushu.

In 1947, aged 16, Kakehashi founded the Kakehashi Clock Store, a watch-repair shop.

He soon began repairing radios.

He later returned to Osaka to attend university.

During a mass food shortage, he contracted tuberculosis and spent several years in a sanitarium, where he became a clinical trial test patient for an experimental medicine antibiotic drug, streptomycin, which improved his condition.

In his spare time, he repaired electronic organs and created prototype organs throughout the 1950s.

At 28, he decided to devote himself to music and pursuit of the ideal electronic musical instrument.

Kakehashi had no musical training, and wanted musical instruments to be accessible for both professionals and amateurs like himself.

He also wanted them to be inexpensive, intuitive, small, and simple.

In 1954, Kakehashi opened the Kakehashi Radio electrical appliance store.

He constructed his first 49-key monophonic organ in 1959, specifically designed to be playable by anyone, with no musical skill necessary.

The focus on miniaturization, affordability, and simplicity later became fundamental to product development at Roland.

Kakehashi founded Ace Tone in 1960 to produce electronic organs and early drum machines.

In 1960, Kakehashi founded Ace Electronic Industries Inc. In 1964, he developed the first fully transistorized electronic drum instrument, the R1 Rhythm Ace, which was exhibited at the Summer NAMM Convention in 1964.

It was a push-button device that was manually hand-operated in a manner similar to modern electronic drum pads.

It was not commercialized in North America, however, due to its lack of automated preset rhythms.

This led to him beginning work on a fully transistorized electronic rhythm machine.

Ace Tone popularized the use of drum machines, with the FR-1 Rhythm Ace finding its way into popular music starting in the late 1960s.

In 1967, Kakehashi patented the "Automatic Rhythm Performance Device" drum machine, a preset rhythm-pattern generator using diode matrix circuit, a drum machine where a "plurality of inverting circuits and/or clipper circuits are connected to a counting circuit to synthesize the output signal of the counting circuit" and the "synthesized output signal becomes a desired rhythm".

These 1970s Roland drum machines were used in disco, R&B, rock, and pop songs from the early 1970s to the early 1980s.

He founded Roland in 1972 and was involved in the development of various influential electronic instruments, such as the TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines and the TB-303 and Juno-60 synthesizers, in addition to Boss guitar amplifiers and effects pedals.

In 1972, Kakehashi founded the Roland Corporation, and led it for four decades.

While rival companies Moog and ARP targeted professional musicians and academics, Kakehashi, who had no musical training, wanted to appeal to amateurs and hobbyists, and focused on miniaturization, affordability, and simplicity.

The company went on to have a big impact on popular music, and did more to shape electronic music than any other company.

At Roland, he continued his work on the development of drum machines.

Roland's first drum machine was the Roland TR-77, released in 1972.

After Kakehashi realized microprocessors could be used to program drum machines, Roland launched the CR-78, the first microprocessor-driven programmable drum machine, in 1978.

He was also key to the development of MIDI, a technical standard that connects a wide variety of electronic instruments, in the 1980s; in 2013, Kakehashi received a Technical Grammy Award, shared with Dave Smith of Sequential, for the invention of MIDI.

Kakehashi's inventions are credited with shaping popular music genres such as electronic, dance, hip hop, R&B, rock and pop music.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Roland released several instruments that have had a lasting influence on popular music.

Roland launched the TR-808, the first fully programmable drum machine, in 1980.

Kakehashi deliberately purchased faulty transistors that created the machine's distinctive "sizzling" sound.

Although it was not an immediate commercial success, the 808 was eventually used on more hit records than any other drum machine and became a cornerstone of the emerging electronic and hip hop genres.

In 1994, Kakehashi founded the Roland Foundation and became chairman.