It’s most likely the rarest drum machine in existence, with no more than 15 or 20 estimated to survive today. It’s certainly one of the most striking, visually. Its array of colored buttons and space-age front panel made it a natural prop in Italian sci-fi B-movies such as 1977’s Anno Zero (War of the Planets).
And it was far, far ahead of its time. It’s now recognized as the first true programmable drum machine, beating the PAiA Programmable Drum Set by at least three years and Roland’s CR-78 by six.
In short, the Eko Computerhythm is the sort of device that can help inspire a pilgrimage—just like the one that the German electronic musician Hainbach made a few years ago.
Hainbach—the nom de pop of Stefan Goetsch—traveled to Italy in 2021 to visit the collection of the Museo del Synth Marchigiano. There, he got to play one of the few surviving Eko Computerhythms. Goetsch documented his trip on a couple of videos available through his YouTube channel, and one of them is devoted exclusively to the Eko. The trip was “an experience that connects me to the history of electronic music,” Goetsch says, “and my understanding deepens because of that.”
The particular Eko that Goetsch played is perhaps even more rare than others. The Museo del Synth Marchigiano’s president, Paolo F. Bragaglia, notes that the machine was modified by the Eko’s designer, Aldo Paci, himself. Bragaglia says that Paci “made a small improvement to the circuit of my specimen” nearly five decades after it was introduced. “Crazy!”
Bragaglia, an electronic composer and film scorer, says the Museo is as much a musical collective as a museum. “It’s an association of musicians who work to raise awareness of the most singular, important, and interesting things in Italian electronic production and, above all, in our region, the Marche.” Le Marche, located in central Italy, was the former headquarters of the Italian music industry.
In the late ‘60s and ‘70s, this industry created a wondrous array of high-tech toys that would revolutionize music—first in Europe, and then across the world. As just one example, the Farfisa Rhythm 10 drum machine, when imported into Germany, supplied beats for a number of pioneering German groups, including the early Kraftwerk.
The Eko was even more sophisticated. In company advertisements, “Eko” was an acronym for “excellence, known quality, and originality,” and on that last score, in particular, the Computerhythm delivered.
It was designed by Giuseppe Censori, Aldo Paci, and Urbano Mancinelli, and the striking visual interface of the Computerhythm consists of six colorful rows of 16 lighted red, orange, and yellow buttons, indicating each beat of a pattern. There are also individual instrument faders for its 12 sounds, a novel feature for the time.
But it’s the programmability of the Eko that truly set it apart. Using a system of punch cards, original rhythms could be fed into the machine. Nearly a decade later, this 16-step programmable template—complete with visual interface—would become the basis for the much better known Roland TR-808.
Yet even Aldo Paci, Bragaglia recalled, was a little hazy on the details of his famous creation. He had to be reminded of the Eko by his wife, who said: “Aldo, it's the machine with the orange buttons on the front.”
And when asked by Bragaglia whether he was aware that he had helped pioneer the 16-step programming system that would become common, Paci demurred. “He was not aware of the importance of his invention,” Bragaglia told Goetsch in their interview.
Like other Italian electronic instruments of this era, the Eko would find favor in Germany. Goetsch recalls hearing guitarist and Krautrock giant Manuel Göttsching using it. Goestsch says one of his favorite pieces of music is Göttsching’s E2-E4, an influential 1984 electronic album recorded in one take, and that he recognized the sound of the Eko on it.
The German electronic group Tangerine Dream also used an Eko. In a 1994 retrospective in Sound On Sound, Chris Franke recalled the Computerhythm. “It came from Italy, from a company called EKO, who made all these cheap warehouse organs,” he told Mark Prendergast.
“They had come up with this science‑fiction‑looking machine,” Franke continued, “a console with eight rows of 16 big knobs which lit up! It worked like a sequencer, which was great, because there were no drum machines in those days. I could program a rhythm that the machine could remember. It was completely analogue—you pushed the buttons and they made the contact—and it was polyphonic! The lights blinked, like on an early Moog sequencer. And when the sequence or rhythm was still running, I could change it—I could delete, skip, and change the rhythm while it was playing. I always liked this aspect of any sequencer.”
Other users around the world would make use of the Eko. “Chim Cherie,” a 1973 single by The Upsetters produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry, used the Computerhythm for its reggae pulse, and the French electronic composer Jean-Michel Jarre was an early adopter of the Eko, which is pictured as part of his collection of gear around the time of the 1976 album Oxygène.
The sounds of the Eko were created through the same analogue synthesis process that was common in pre-sampling days. “Divorced from the interface,” Goetsch notes, “I doubt they would wow anyone.”
But that interface is another story. “It is a very inviting musical canvas—the interface is wonderfully spacious, it gives the mind freedom to wander,” says Goetsch. “Having every beat always visible is like working with a score. It also feels very solid to touch.”
He adds: “There is a lot to be discovered in playing these arcane machines. They were made as instruments, with an interface tied to the sound engine. Playing that interface results in different music than if your interface is always the same mouse/keyboard/controller.”
The connection forged between the Museo and the Eko’s creators is currently deepening into the making of a documentary that Bragaglia says will cover Eko among other Italian electronic instruments. In the meantime, Bragaglia and his cohort are determined that their Eko won’t just be a museum piece. “Among other things,” he notes, “we also use it a lot live for our electronic music shows.”
Goetsch used the Eko also to put together a sound pack for subscribers to his Patreon. Yet while some creators may believe that all vintage sounds are now just a sample away, knowing the history of the Eko and other devices of its era, Goetsch says, is important for today’s electronic musicians.
He says that at the time the Eko was made, Italy was a world leader in electronic instrument production. “Two decades later, everything collapsed—20,000 people lost their jobs, and huge factories lie abandoned with coffee mugs still on the table, now covered in layers of pigeon shit and dust. I would have had no idea of all of that if I had not played the instrument at the Museo del Synth Marchigiano.”
About the Author: Dan LeRoy’s latest book is Dancing To The Drum Machine: How Electronic Percussion Conquered The World (available here). For more information visit danleroy.com.