Very few electronic musical instruments have left such a lasting impression and influence as the Roland TB-303. This “synth” machine was released in 1982 and marketed as an accompaniment machine for guitarists. It was quickly written off as a failure due to its unrealistic distortions and confusing interface. The release of this bass machine synthesizer was so poorly received that production was halted in 1942 after the production of a mere 10,000 units. Despite its low price of $400, many groups complained of its unnatural sound which could never duplicate the human intricacies of a bass player.
-This quote is taken directly from the Roland TB-303’s 1982 user’s manual.
Interestingly enough, the confusion and uselessness it afforded to the guitarists for whom this machine was created led to its ready availability in pawn shops and second hand stores across the country. The cheap and interestingly designed machine caught the eye of many garage-based producers and mixers in impoverished areas across the country. No where was this machine’s impact as immense as in Chicago’s House and Electronic underground. A few producers, most notably Chicago based Dj Pierre took this machine’s idiosyncrasies and fashioned an entirely new bass beat, in effect creating a new genre of electronic music.
-producer Marshall Jefferson
The Roland TB 303 features a keyboard spanning an 8va range, and a total of 6 knobs which control various effects. The machine also left producers to choose wether to work with a saw waveform, a complete revolution and distortion of the traditional square waveform. When innovators such as DJ Pierre began using these controls to distort and augment simple baselines, they realized the “slippery” and completely new sound world the Roland made accessible.
These “slippery” sounds can be heard in one of the most revolutionary works in contemporary music in history, the Dj Pierre produced ‘Acid Tracks” This new sound confused audiences at first, but after a few months, this track gained massive support in the underground rave scene and many more Chicago based Djs began to champion the Roland TB-303 and its new soundscape. This new sound in traditional Chicago House was dubbed Acid House, taking its name from the pioneering Dj Pierre track. This popularity spread as far as Britain by way of Ibiza where Acid-House beats reached main-stream popularity, in part aided by the Rave culture of the 1980s and 1990s.
Acid House’s focus on subtle evolution of a beat, and otherworldly sounds quickly became synonymous with the club drug culture already in its peak by the mid 1980s. Drugs like MDMA (known as molly, ecstasy, XTC etc.) LSD, Ketamine and others, quickly became synonymous with the scenes in which Acid House was dominant as the shifts and insistence of its sound provided an excellent compliment to many of these illegal drug’s effects. This led Acid House, by way of the Roland TB-303’s quirky unrealistic sounds, to become the soundtrack for the cultural revolution and decadent freedom of the era.
“Back in the 80s those early acid records spoke about alienation , they said square peg round hole , the surrounding records were almost gospel like messages of hard times and hope , quite churchy. Or euphoric weekend escape Anthems like Someday ‘Aint no Stopping us now’,they had R n B roots. Something like Phuture or Adonis hit the spot for me with insistent abstraction, it was outsider music with pure energy, it had cut from the line of history, it was a page turned, a clean page. These machines meant we all had the same accent ,previously a UK record and a US record, or a Belgian record or a Dutch record all had an accent musically speaking, Roland was an esperanto.”
Acid House’s dominance in the world of electronic and mainstream music came to an end almost as quickly as it rose. By July of 1989 Acid-House had faded into the mid ground of electronic sounds, but this was not before it had influenced the next generation of music. Mainstream dance pop was not immune to the Roland’s new sound, most notably the Madonna track “Ray of Light. New genres like trance, techno, big beat, and trip hop can all be directly traced back to experimentation with Acid House tracks. It’s influence is still incredibly apparent today, with many almost exact physical clones on the market, and numerous software dupes. Little did anyone know that this initial market failure, and quirky little piece of confusing plastic would change the face of pop culture in such an extraordinary way.