Roger Linn is an American designer of electronic musical instruments and equipment. He is the designer of the LM-1, the first drum machine to use samples, and the MPC sampler, which had a major influence on the development of hip hop. Roger Linn is also a member of the Dead Presidents Society, a group of innovators in the field of electronic music. In 1979, Roger Linn and Alex Moffett founded Linn Moffett Electronics (soon to be renamed Linn Electronics) to develop Linn’s design for a drum machine that uses digital samples. It would be called LM-1 for Linn/Moffett/1. Moffett would leave the company in 1982. After Linn Electronics, Linn collaborated with the Japanese company Akai to design the MPC60, an integrated digital sampling drum machine and MIDI sequencer released in 1988. According to Linn, “[The collaboration] was a good fit because Akai needed a creative designer with ideas and I didn’t want to do sales, marketing, finance or manufacturing, all of which Akai was very good at.” The MPC60 was followed by the MPC60 MkII and the MPC3000. In 2001 Roger Linn founded a new company, Roger Linn Design. The company’s first product offering was the AdrenaLinn, with the LinnStrument music performance controller added later. Roger Linn has had a level of songwriting success, penning hits (“Promises”, Eric Clapton 1979; “Quittin’ Time”, Lou Ann Barton 1986, Mary Chapin Carpenter 1991, Amy Bishop 2009), and having toured as a guitarist with the pianist/songwriter Leon Russell in the 1970s at age 21. In 2011 Roger was awarded a Grammy Award for Lifetime Technical Achievement, recognizing his many contributions to the music recording industry. (Wikipedia Source)