"I opened it up, it had diodes and stuff going all over — we became instant friends. I begged him for years to come up with a programmable rhythm unit because I got tired of having to change out the patterns the hardware way — it was hard!" Kakehashi was listening. In 1972 Kakehashi formed Roland Corporation and hired Don to work on projects that eventually became the CompuRhythm CR-68, and in 1980, the iconic TR-808, a drum machine upon which the entire history of modern dance music was built.

It’s basically a 1977 copy of Ableton Live that weighs two tons and does a heart-melting rendition of "Amazing Grace"

Forty-four years after that Hammond demo Don was performing at NAMM once again. 2013 saw him perched in a corner of the Anaheim Convention Center’s Hall E, the cheaper basement exhibition space where most cash-strapped innovators buy floor space. He was surrounded by a plexiglass-enclosed network of ancient circuitry called LEO, short for Live Electronic Orchestra. It’s a one-off work of art, a kind of who’s who of vintage synthesizers networked to one another through connection standards the industry has long forgotten but Don is still fluent in. A series of hand-built buffer boards and timing modules allow an Arp Pro Soloist to talk to a Promars Computronic and a Roland Jupiter-4. The Hammond expression pedal can control a variety of parameters for any of the sounds coming through the Boss KM-6A mixer, whose channels Don built a remote control panel for right into the body of the three-stage organ. It’s basically a 1977 copy of Ableton Live that weighs two tons, doesn’t have a EULA, and does a heart-melting rendition of "Amazing Grace."

Don sat there and played his network of boxes for five straight eight-hour days as a guest of the NAMM museum, which had paid for LEO to be taken out of storage and refurbished for the show. He was constantly popping out from behind the plexi to hug people he’d met throughout his careers as both engineer and session player for people like Quincy Jones, Sergio Mendez, and Michael Jackson. The whole time he was fielding questions from noobs and giddy nerds alike, telling stories from the golden era of early electronic synthesis like some sort of funky Garrison Keillor. He had his 808 with him, of course, and I asked if he had had any idea that it would become what it did. He certainly hadn’t, but he did have a really good story to tell me about one of its most revolutionary sounds.