The TB-303
A celebration of classic Roland synths would be nothing without at least a passing nod to the iconic silver bass box that spawned an entire genre. Despite the bass guitaremulating synth’s commercial failure in the mid 80s, Chicago house producers realised that the TB-303 could output squelching synth sequences that, when combined with wild parameter tweaking and dirty stompbox distortion, became the bubbling foundation of acid house and techno. Fastforward to today and the sound of ‘acid’ is more popular than ever – its sliding, squealing sounds providing the soundtrack to many a hipster rave and festival.
Fundamentally, the TB-303 is about as basic a synth as you can get: one monophonic oscillator (switchable between saw and square), sequenced via a primitive onboard sequencer and subsequently filtered via a resonant low-pass filter. Despite its primitive architecture, though, synth collectors are more than happy to pay thousands for a second-hand 303, due to the fact that it’s far more than the sum of its parts: namely the way in which ‘accented’ and ‘slid’ notes interact with the filter’s cutoff, resonance and filter decay envelope to produce that iconic acid squelch.
If you’re not quite ready to invest several thousand in a second-hand relic, there are a few software replicas that authentically emulate the TB-303’s architecture and features, including D16’s Phoscyon (€59 from d16.pl) and AudioRealism’s ABL3 (10/10, 229, £80). However, you can emulate the synth’s idiosyncrasies with any capable soft synth and an understanding of the original synth’s workings, as we outlined back in 203’s 303 For Free feature ( bit.ly/cm203). In this tutorial, we’re going to recap and show you how to recreate the iconic TB-303 sound with our own Dune CM synth, found in the CM Plugins folder.