The Fall And Rise Of The Tb-303 - Arturia ACID V User Manual

1.1. The Fall and Rise of the TB-303

The original TB-303. Image via Wikimedia Commons
In 1981, Japanese keyboard giant Roland wanted to produce a self-sequencing bass
synthesizer that could replace a bass guitar player in a band. Given that the design lead was
Tadao Kikumoto, who also designed the TR-909 drum machine, hopes were high.
However, its original target customers — singer-songwriters and bands — scratched their
heads. Its monophonic analog oscillator produced either a sawtooth or square wave, fed
into a 24dB-per-octave lowpass filter with very pronounced resonance. In other words, it
sounded nothing like a bass guitar no matter how you set the controls. Instead, it produced
a "squelchy," rubbery, almost nasal tone somewhere between a jaw harp (one can be heard
in the beginning of "Join Together" by The Who) and a thinned-out Mini.
Also, the musicians at whom it was aimed found its pattern-based interface less than
intuitive, with its constant need to toggle between play and write modes. It was also a
non-starter for synth players of the era, who wanted polyphony and ever-growing sound
libraries. So, the TB-303 lived its first commercial lifetime mainly in the bargain bins until it
was discontinued in 1984.
Over the next ten years or so, a miracle happened. Electronic music producers liked its
quirky tone and found that beginning in the late 1980s, they could purchase units for next
to nothing. Sync input and CV/gate output meant they could sync it rhythmically with
their drum machines. The emergence of acid, techno, and house styles (especially in the
underground music scenes of Detroit and Chicago, among other places) saw the TB-303
used in ever more tracks. If you were on a dance floor anytime between, say, 1987 and
2000, hearing that squelchy squawk meant things were about to get lit .
Today, original TB-303 units in mint condition sometimes fetch upwards of US$3,000 on
the used gear marketplace. Thus the TB-303 is now in the good company of many electric
instruments that sounded nothing like what they were supposed to sound like (for example,
the B-3 was meant to emulate a pipe organ; the tine electric piano, an acoustic piano) but
found their own true voices because their true audiences found them.
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