Information AboutTb-303 |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ROLAND TB-303 | |
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The TB-303 is a Synthesizer / Sequencer manufactured by the Roland Corporation in 1982 and 1983 that had a defining role in the development of contemporary Electronic Music . The TB-303 (named for " Transistor Bass ") was originally sold to guitarists for bass Accompaniment when practising alone, a role in which it failed miserably. Production lasted approximately 18 months, resulting in 10,000 units (which is why it's considered a collector's item nowadays, often valued to amounts of 800 to 1000 USD ). It wasn't until the mid- to late- 1980s that DJs and musicians in Chicago found a use for the machine in the context of the newly developing House Music . Phuture 's " Acid Trax " is widely acknowledged to have been the first Acid House track to incorporate the sounds that have come to define the sound the TB-303 is known for today. However, earlier sources of the classic TB-303 sound can be traced back as far as the early Electro scene - Ice T, Newcleus, Mantronix, and soon after even pop music - Heaven 17, Section 25 to name a few. In the early 90's a harder type of Acid sound emerged, the 303 was often overdriven giving a harsher sound, artists such as Hardfloor with the seminal 1992 EP Acperience and Interlect 3000 with their 1993 Volcano EP. In the mid 90's Acid evolved again into Acid Techno, and artists such as Immersion, DDR, and the Liberators took the BPMs up a gear. The well-known " Acid " sound can be produced with a TB-303 by playing a melody while changing the Cutoff Frequency , Resonance , Envelope Modulation , and accent controls. (The accent control modified the note volume, resonance, and envelope modulation.) A distortion or overdrive effect (usually from a guitar pedal or overdriving the gain on a mixer) is commonly used to give the TB-303 a harsher 'dirty' sound, which also emphasises the screeching and squelchy sounds that " Acid " is known for. The synth had a single oscillator (set to either Sawtooth Wave or Square Wave by a switch), a simple Envelope Generator (with decay control only), and a Lowpass Filter with -18 dB per octave rolloff (with controls for cutoff frequency, resonance, and envelope amount). The TB-303 has a couple of unique features that contribute to the characteristic acid sound, during the programming of a sequence the user can decide if a note is accented, and if it has slide - a smooth transition to the following note. The accent circuitry as well as increasing the amplitude of a note also emphasises the amount of resonance, resulting in the familiar 'wow' sound at higher resonance settings, Roland refer to this as the 'gimmick' circuitry. The slide circuitry is constant time meaning that whatever the interval between notes the time taken to reach the correct pitch is always the same. It also featured a 'simple' step-time method for entering note data into the 16-step programmable sequencer. This was notoriously difficult to use, and would often result in entering a different sequence than the one that had been intended - some users also take advantage of the quirky fact that when the batteries are removed for a certain period, patterns that are programmed in memory begin to vary in random ways - one of the factors that helped to create the randomish acid sound. There have also been many modifications produced for the TB-303 such as the DEVILFISH, ACIDLAB and the BORG mods. These increase the options for alternate sounds and effects. Roland's designer of the TB-303, Tadao Kikumoto , was also responsible for the well-known TR-909 ("Transistor Rhythm"). ATTACK OF THE CLONES Around the middle of the 1990s there was a TB-303 void that appeared in the electronic dance music scene. As there were never many TB-303s to begin with, many small synthesizer companies cropped up and started to develop their own TB-303 hardware clones. This new wave of TB-303 clones was started when a company called Novation Electronic Music Systems came out with their portable Bass Station keyboard released in 1994. Then followed by many other TB-303 "clones" like Future Retro's 777, Syntecno's TeeBee, Doepfer 's MS-404 , MAM's Freebass FB-383 and many many more. As the popularity of these new TB-303 clones grew for the smaller companies the original TB-303 manufacturer Roland Corporation finally took notice of this market trend in 1996 and released their version of the end of all TB-303 clones called the MC-303 Groovebox. As good as the Roland Corporation tried, their new "303 clone" was an entirely new product that had almost nothing to do with the original TB-303 besides a few bass samples and the inspired interface design. The most obvious difference include the inexpensive digital synthesis engine featured in the MC-303 rather than the analog variety used in the TB-303. By 1997 Software synthesisers were just starting to break into the music world with massive popularity at retail music stores around the world. One notable program at this time was made by Propellerhead Software with their Software emulator package titled ReBirth . The software became very popular, as it provided a cheap and easy way for musicians to reproduce the classic 303, 808 , (and later 909) sounds -- all within the comfort of a home computer and the newly commercialized World Wide Web. Although it is still in popular use to this day (this may come partly from its flexibility to be ' Modded ' by users to produce different sounds), its usage has often been frowned upon by more traditionalist music producers, who claim that the software reproduction is an inferior copy of the genuine sound. However, most of the program's supporters are willing to acknowledge this and still argue that the software is a means to an end that would be otherwise unachievable, due to the rarity of the instrument, as well as the high price of units that still remain. As of September 2005 , support for ReBirth has been discontinued by Propellerhead software, and the software is now available for free download. The latest clone is a Do-It-Yourself hardware solution called the X0xb0x , it uses most of the original components in the synthesizer section for a very authentic sound - the sequencer section is different though adding Midi and USB as well as a different method of entering data. EXAMPLES EXTERNAL LINKS
Emulations in Software
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