By Keith Walsh
Just a quick post on March 3rd, because it’s already late in the day, and I actually was not much of a fan of the Roland TB-303, though it is somewhat significant in the development of popular electronic music in the last 30 to 40 years. Released in 1982 along with its companion the TR-606 analog drum machine (which shared a form factor), the Roland TB-303 had a basic analog sound engine and a frustrating keyboard interface to control the sequencer and was initially a commercial failure.
Though the TB-303 was not a huge success at launch, I was around when one early adopter -Jon St. James of Stacey Q ‘s band SSQ — used it on the album Playback (1983), recorded at Fullerton’s Casbah Studio.
St. James had an interest in programming this tedious machine, step by step to achieve that coveted mechanical bassline. Soon he discarded the TB-303 for the Roland MC-202 Micro-Composer which had a wider sonic range thanks to a more complete analog synth engine, as well as a more aesthetic build quality, including squishy rubber buttons on a larger keyboard. This switch happened somewhere in time between the release of Playback and St James’ solo album Transatlantic (1984), which also released on EMI and which I was co-author of the title track.
Craved By Ravers
I often wondered if the always witty Elvis Costello, definitely not an electronic musician, was making a sly reference to Roland with his line “the butcher, the baker and the bass line maker” on his hit song “The Loved Ones” from the 1982 album Imperial Bedroom. After all, stories of failure have populated his songs from the very beginning of his career.
The TB-303 had a second life in the mid 80s and early 90s when Acid and House music arrived on the club scene. Those innovators took what is arguably an annoying feature –the squelch control on the filter — and used it to create a new sound that ravers apparently were craving. Now in 2024, in its software form, the TB-303 is perhaps as influential as ever.
Nowadays there are recent hardware variations on the TB-303 from Roland and others, including the Behringer TD 3 used on my interpretation of a Kraftwerk track below. There is also a software clone from Roland Cloud.
(Graphic Image of Roland TB-303 By GMArtworks on Render Hub, manipulated in Photoshop by Synthbeat.com)
Roland TB-303 at Vintage Synth Explorer
Roland MC-202 at Vintage Synth Explorer
Roland TB-3 Touch Synth at Roland Dot Com
808 Day 2023 At Synthbeat Dot Com
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