The Crow Hill Company has released Vaults - Acid Synth as the latest addition to its line of free and accessible virtual instruments from company co-founder and composer, Christian Henson.
An homage to the Roland TB-303 Bass Line, launched with high hopes in 1981 as a Computer Controlled bass synth before being deemed a commercial failure and discontinued quickly thereafter, it was later instrumental in the emergence of Acid House music.
At the time of its release, it was Roland’s intention to mimic the characteristics of an electric bass guitar when there were far fewer tools to create electronic music available than today. But buyers of the TB-303 Bass Line were possibly swayed by the fact that it could be time-synced – using Roland’s proprietary five-pin DIN sync interface (later superseded by Midi) – to its contemporarily-released Computer Controlled sibling, the TR-606 Drumatix drum machine.
Though the engineers involved tried their best to imitate the sound of an electric bass guitar with the avaiable technology, the TB-303 Bass Line fell short in capturing its subtleties as an instrument, and was discontinued within a couple of years – with Roland selling off the last of the 10,000 units manufactured cheaply.
‘DJ Pierre and his band Phuture found a used TB-303 in a music shop in Chicago for a bargain price,’ says The Crow Hill Company’s Theo Le Derf. ‘They started experimenting with the bass sequencer and a drum machine while playing about randomly with the filter and resonance knobs. The sound they produced was so unique and, frankly, weird that they decided to commit the jam session to tape. With the release of this experiment on Trax Records in 1987, they unwittingly birthed a new genre: Acid House. Key, was tiny synth that was used “incorrectly”.’
‘The first large dial – Cut Off – is a 24dB low-pass filter that is automatically assigned to Midi CC1,’ say Theo Le Derf by way of an quick guided tour.
‘Resonance determines the peak of the filter as it opens and closes, which creates that characteristically “squelchy” sound that the synth is known for. The small dials are effects – Mod controls how much voltage is being sent to the filter, so you can get some really interesting sounds by adjusting the Cut Off dial and Mod simultaneously; Decay controls the decay for all the envelopes; and there are also our standard Echo and Splosh, with the Splosh being an algorithmic imitation of a cave, which suits this synth so brilliantly.
‘Another thing to mention is that you can obviously play staccato, but when you play legato – Midi notes overlapping with one another, you get a glide between the notes,’ he adds. ‘This glide effect is another characteristic that the TB-303 is renowned for.
‘The story arc of this synth is so amazing – from its unpromising beginning to completely defining a genre and an era, it’s so exciting to have this celebrated instrument at my fingertips for free.’
