A Short History of the 303 in 12 songs 🙂 How the 303 failed successfully - our fav TB-303 patterns

This is the sound of the legendary Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer. In this video, we're going to look at its fascinating history, and we'll do so with a colorful mix of our favorite 303 patterns spanning across four decades, including its very first appearance. So let's get started. Hello everyone, this is... Our story begins in 1981, the birth year of the TB-303. It was designed by Tadao Kikimoto, who had already been the chief engineer of the TR-808 drum machine and who later went on to design its successor, the TR-909.

All legends in their own right. However, when it comes to the 303, the synth world seems to be divided. On the one hand, it doesn’t quite measure up to the 909.

On the one hand, it doesn't do what it's supposed to do. The 303 is officially advertised as a replacement for a bass guitar, but I don't think it could fool anyone in that regard—except maybe the one reviewer who, in 1982, called it "frighteningly realistic and undetectable from the real thing." Sure, it's unintuitive to program.

We made a whole video about how much fun the sequencer can be, and it makes silly meow sounds. On the other hand, you could argue that while the 303 failed at imitating an actual bass guitar, it provided a distinctive sound. It was something much better instead—a truly new and unique sound that was so characteristic it shaped entire music genres for decades to come.

For some people, the 303 sequence is an inspiration machine that keeps producing happy accidents like a golden goose. And of course, it makes awesome meow sounds. The earliest recorded 303 we could find was on "Rip It Up" by Orange Juice, a Scottish pop band. Singer and guitarist Edwin Collins was quite adventurous with new sounds. The band tried to use the 303 in the way it was actually advertised by Roland, as a substitute for an electric bass guitar.

Accordingly, the bass line leans a little on the unspectacular side, but the characteristic liquid, splashy sound of the 303 is already there. Some might say it immediately clashes with the rest of the production. Oh, before I press play, of course, we'll accompany this menu of 303 lines with a selection of our finest drum machines. Enjoy! By the way, Edwin Collins had to sing these bass lines to the producer, who then programmed them into the 303, which already gives you a clue that this might not be the most user-friendly device. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Charanjit Singh accidentally announced invented acid house.

The Indian musician created an album called *Synthesizing: 10 Ragas to a Disco Beat*, using a minimalist electronic setup that included an 808 drum machine, a Jupiter 8 synthesizer, and a 303. However, people just weren't ready for that yet, and it remained in obscurity until it was rediscovered in the 2000s. "Raga Bayraf" truly features one of the best 303 lines ever conceived. You can tell that Chiranjit knew his stuff because, while most 303 patterns consist of only one bar or less, he programmed an elaborate four-bar melody into the sequencer.

Pay attention to how the bars alternate between octave jumps and slides. Both are common ingredients of acid bass lines. Thank you. Well, this was unavoidable—a decade later.

It's the story of every legendary Roland machine, it seems. If you followed the price explosion of vintage 303s, then it's no surprise that people set out to create new versions of this discontinued classic. There are many replicas, emulations, clones, or descendants—whatever you want to call them. They all have their own quirks and sound a bit different from each other. Some of them come with extra bells and whistles.

For instance, a built-in distortion offers more octaves. This one has mutes and hammer-ons, in addition to slides and accents, but also has an annoying program bug that the manufacturer won't fix. Some have a more accessible sequencer that you can reprogram while the pattern is playing. And those are just the ones we've ordered over the years. Apparently, you can never have enough 303s.

But this one was kindly loaned to us for this video by Andreas from Comptronics, who builds these ready-to-use Dinsync RE-303s. We wanted to feature it in the video because it's advertised as the most faithful replica. We're not affiliated in any way, but if you want to check them out, the link is in the video description. As for the term "acid house," it was coined five years later in Chicago. Future's "Acid Tracks" is one of the first releases of the genre.

And according to DJ Pierre, the 303 patterns on it were a direct result of not knowing how to operate the machine. They were simply happy accidents found through experimentation. This experimentation also involved using the sound controls to a much larger degree. This is just half a bar, eight steps. However, one defining feature of the 303 is that you can get so much mileage out of a simple pattern by adjusting the sound controls.

On this track, Future really showcased the full vocal range of the 303. Apparently, people left the dance floor when they first heard this. But as the night went on and it was played for the fourth time, something clicked with the crowd, and everyone went crazy for it. Hey, maybe that trick also works with your dollar's jams. Assettracks also featured some distortion on the 303.

You can add all kinds of grit and dirt with guitar pedals like this one. Running the 303 into a cheap mixer with low headroom and cranking the gain is also a popular option. In hindsight, the 303 seems like it was made for this. The filter resonance and the accent interact so well with distortion, and once people realized this, there was no turning back. What's better than a 303 bassline?

Three 303 basslines, of course. The album title "TB Resuscitation" and the fact that they dedicated it to its inventor, Tadao Kikimoto, should give you an idea of how much Todd Floor loved the 303. The German duo was known to use up to six TB-303s at once. But for "Akperience 1"? Wait, is it "Akperience"?

What does that even mean? Acid experience? But wouldn't it be "asperience" then? That's a very different experience altogether. Anyway.

Aspirience Outro features music from the acid house and Chicago house genres. Artists like Khaftberg inspired Josh Wing to transition from DJing to music production. He certainly made a name for himself with his 303 classic "Higher State of Consciousness." The song showcases numerous pattern variations while only utilizing two note pitches in total. It is very interesting nonetheless.

Towards the end of the song, the 303 goes into full screech mode. Josh Wink's 303 seems to have a lot more resonance than this one, so maybe he tinkered with the internal calibration trim parts. We won't do any surgery on this machine, though; we'll just see how far these settings will take us. Music.

Music. Music. Music. Music. Music.

Music. Music. Music. Music. Outro music. From the 1998 *Blade* movie soundtrack, where it introduced the 303 to an even wider mainstream audience.

If you don't know how to program a 303, then here's the easiest way to do it. In pattern write mode, clear a pattern. Go into time mode and specify that you want to play 16 notes. In pitch mode, randomly input 16 note pitches. Do these even have to be in the same key? Nobody knows. Then, we'll make a second pass in pitch mode and go through our pitches one by one, changing the octaves of a note and adding slides or accents, or both. Let's skip a note from time to time; we don't want to seem like we're trying too hard. Exit with the function, and we're done. Well, well, well, what are the odds?

And for the 40-second time on our channel, back by popular demand, it's always nice to have it on the show: here's Daft Punk's "Da Funk." I'll admit it, this is the first thing I ever punched into a 303 sequencer. This is the reason I wanted to use the 303 in the first place. Although I must say, I've always wondered if this is one of those patterns that were created by just randomly punching buttons.

There is a bit more to this than we originally thought. When we checked and reworked our transcription for this video, we noticed two higher notes in there. With all the distortion and the filter resonance, it can be easy to get those wrong, especially because they are outside of the programming range of the 303. You can't directly place them on the sequencer. Instead, what you have to do is program the sequence at a lower pitch and then use the tuning knob or the transpose feature to bring it up to the correct pitch.

Apparently, 1995 was a pretty good year for the 303. From the sheer number of songs we found from that time, the mid-90s could be considered the golden era of the 303. During that period, the popularity of acid house had shifted from Chicago to the UK and also to Germany, which is where Junk Project is from. This track neatly showcases the 303's accent feature. Among other things, that accent changes the envelope for a step and raises its volume and filter frequency.

That makes the note go from this to that. You could say it gets more meowy, or it starts to sound like an angry croaking frog. This is a really fun pattern, and it's so short and simple that we might as well program it on the fly. It's only half a bar, so let's tell the sequencer that we just need eight steps. We fill the timing cue with eight notes, and this couldn't be any easier; we'll write only D's into the pitch cue.

The result is, of course, absolutely trivial and underwhelming. But how about an octave lower on the first note? Better. What if we add an accent on the second and fifth notes? There’s the big, fat frog.

Slap some distortion on, and hey presto, here's your angry carpet of corrosive bass notes. One might think that after the acid-saturated '90s, the 303 would have run its course, but it just keeps popping up. Róisín Murphy's "Overpowered," from 2007, is a more minimalistic track that is driven by a gnarly bassline only a 303-style synth could produce. There are lots of slow, tasteful modulation on the sound controls, and we get to use the transpose feature. We just love this, so I'm going to quote Roy's backstory here.

In 1981, deep within the laboratory of the Roland Corporation, Tadao Kikomoto invented the TB-303. However, when Kikomoto heard that it was being used to create the acid sound, he ordered that all TB-303s should be recalled and destroyed. Soon after, Kikomoto discovered that the last remaining TB-303 was, in fact, owned by Roy of the Ravers. He vowed to destroy both Roy and his 303, intending to put an end to the acid sound forever. On "Emotinium," Roy gives us a wonderfully dreamy and melodic 4-bar 303 line. With its slides and unusually high notes, it almost sounds like it’s singing.

Just like in funk, this goes above the normal programming range of the 303, but here we have to transpose it up by the maximum—an entire octave. Music by the late 2010s seems to bring out the tender side of the 303. The Swedish duo Carbon Based Lifeforms already had a background in acid, so when they started making ambient music, they just kept using the 303. I have to say it fits perfectly into the mellow soundscapes of Accede.

Accede? Oh, this is another pun on acid. Music, thank you. This is our final pattern for this video, and it's a testament to the 303's lasting influence even 40 years later. Pokémon Sword and Shield's region was inspired by the UK, and for the gym leader battle theme, they incorporated elements from acid house, which had become part of British culture.

So, in a way, we've come full circle here. This is acid in a Japanese video game soundtrack. The synth used in the battle theme doesn't sound exactly like a 303. There are 64th notes in there. The slide time seems a bit different in some places, and the second pattern is an additional octave above what any other machines are capable of.

But all the important parts of the 303 DNA are there, so we adapted it back to the original sequencer. Given the outro music, regardless of how the 303 was marketed by Roland, Kikumoto's plan for the machine couldn't have been solely that of an electric bass imitation. If that had been the case, then the sound controls would have been much more restrictive. However, it's far too easy to achieve those wonderfully alien, liquid sounds from the 303. Therefore, it stands to reason that, just like the 808's bass drum decay, experimenting with the sounds to this degree might have been a part of his vision all along.

Thank you so much for watching this video. There are a lot of great 303 patterns out there, so you can imagine we had a really hard time deciding which ones to include in this episode. We'd especially like to thank our patrons for your support and also for all of your 303 song recommendations. We definitely found some new favorites in there. Speaking of which, thank you for the music!

Music, thank you. Music, thank you. Music, bye. Be buene be funny. Envelope mode is the best knob.

It makes the sound go from one point to another, but only if the decay is short enough.