As a longtime synth nerd, it still amazes me to see beautiful tools like this running in a web browser.
Excellent job!
(Hint, it's also got a variable pulse-width oscillator and an LFO, which the TB-303 lacked.)
I really never heard the enigmatic scale that much but it sounds wonderful. The only thing I would want to hear are melodic and harmonic minor modes.
It was never finished and I was meaning to add a polyfill for the missing cancelAndHoldAtTime function for Firefox.
Edit: I've just hacked in a quick polyfill
Is it mostly for emulating slow-moving changes on fixed timelines, a la automation tracks in traditional DAWs like Logic and Ableton? Is design rationale documented somewhere?
Other systems go further, such as Web Audio Modules (that builds on top of AudioWorklet) implement sample-accurate parameter change from within the rendering thread, using wait-free ring-buffers. That requires `SharedArrayBuffer` but works great, and is the lowest latency possible (since it uses atomic loads and stores from e.g. the main thread to the rendering thread).
As many seem to have mentioned below, it brings back memories of Rebirth in some ways. What it also reminds me of is the beautiful results you could have by plugging some simple modules together to create soundscapes. The limits are the things that provide some semblance of freedom and this is no different. Greetings from a fellow UK acid (techno) head! :P
I'll look into adding a wav export feature.
['Darkness', [0, 1, 3]],
['Darkness2', [0, 1]],
['Single', [3]],
['Locrian', [0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10]],
['Aeolian', [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10]],
['Mixolydian', [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10]],
...
So if you had the 'Darkness' scale selected and had the root dropdown set to 0, the notes in this scale would be C, C#, D# which is 0, 1, 3 if you count the keys on a keyboard. If you changed the root to 2, then it would become D, D#, F (2, 3, 5).
Hope that makes sense.
See also the Endless Acid Banger:
https://www.vitling.xyz/toys/acid-banger/
And happy Acid August!
Every year we celebrate the 303 with a club night in SF.
Thanks.
IIRC when it came out in the early 80s it was intended to be a substitute for bass guitars. So perhaps that is part of your sentiment.
The 90's was different, the people making synth music pushed the synths past what their default setup was capable of. Synths used in the mid/late 90's for psychedelic/acid trance sound nothing like 80's synths, but they are the same synths.
The "303" was intended as a bass instrument, but with 90's acid trance it's typically used as a lead, as well as a bass.
Dwayne Goettel would be a big counter example! :) Although his best work was early 90s I suppose.
As someone who feels like the sound of the 303 touches me deep in my soul, it's constantly disappointing to be reminded that other people don't hear it the same way I do. You can even see it in comments on this post where expressing a love or appreciation for the actual sound of the silver box is dismissed as elitist or something because lol whatever, any old synth sounds just as good. Most people either can't hear or don't care about what makes it special, which perhaps explains why it never became respected as a mainstream instrument like the 808 did.
Fortunately the clones these days are very cheap and very good and music has become so easy to obtain that you can visit Bandcamp every week and still find new tracks featuring the 303 and its descendants. Every now and then you might hear a 303 in a mainstream tune and it's a treat, but if you just love the sound and don't mind listening to music that few others get, I don't think there's ever been a better time.
If anything, I think it got over exposed in the 90s. The sound is just so distinct with the slides and accents.
Rebirth was also the first really popular software synth I remember and at that point it was just 303 overkill.
For me, it was an acid house album in the 2010s that I can't remember that made me appreciate the 303 again.
For me it never felt like the 303 ever got really overdone in mainstream electronic music. Certainly there was the riff from Pump Panel's Confusion remix showing up all over the place, and there were a few tracks that got a high rotation on MTV like Daft Punk's Da Funk and Josh Wink's Higher State, but I don't think it was ever really ubiquitous outside of acid music, which is already a niche genre. Like, we never got 808s & Heartbreak for the 303.
It was definitely controversial inside the synth community, though, where hardcore analog and modular synth nerds scoffed at it being so limited and toy-like, and everybody - young and old - resented it becoming so expensive and sought-after, which in turn raised the prices of other vintage synths that according to the rumor mill could do a decent approximation if you programmed them just right.
Rebirth busted that market by making the basic essence of the sound available to everyone, and there were plenty of bad acid tracks that came out during that period, but I think that's also when the opportunity was there for it to really break through as a serious instrument. Later VSTs like Phoscyon took inspiration from mods like Devilfish and more elaborate clones like the FR-777, building on the 303 base to create the kinds of sounds that in the old days might have required a lot hacking/patching up of different instruments to construct. But by that point it was clear that the mainstream didn't really care.
I'm at work right now so don't have access to my music library to share specific favorite tracks, but there is still so much great music featuring the 303 coming out - it never stopped. There is stuff for people of every taste. If the more unsubtle stuff doesn't work for you, you might want to check out Mighty Force label, which has been putting out a bunch of IDM/braindance and pleasant electro music recently that sometimes has delightful uses of the 303. Also in the back of my mind for more IDM-ish and electro stuff are Analogical Force, Virtual Urban Records, HC Records, Nocta Numerica... There's a bunch more in that vein, plus all the usual suspects doing big room techno, hard party acid, all-hardware synth jams etc etc, but you probably need to dig in any case. I tend to find even the best albums only have one or two tracks that are to my taste, but everyone is different so it's great that there is so much out there.
About half of the patterns it generated were something I could listen to for a while. Makes me want to get back into electronic music again.
It uses notes from the selected scale and octave (from the dropdowns). If the pattern is of an even length, say 16, it will split it into 4 chunks of 4, then randomly decide if it should generate new data for the chunk or copy the previous chunk. It uses the repeat slider for the probability on this.
It randomly applies the 303 modifiers (up, down, accent, slide) using probability set with the sliders on the pattern tab.
There's also an 'empty' slider which sets the probablity of an empty note appearing in a chunk.
I am working on a small game and want to make some jungle dnb tracks for it.
I grabbed Renoise and follow some tutorials and stuff. Is there a better way to go about it?
Baby Audio has a pretty nice VST instrument and 90s preset pack that might have the sound you are looking for - have a listen here https://static1.squarespace.com/static/561e2985e4b08862a3496...
On a side note - if you are looking for people to help out I’d love to have a crack, also looking to learn.
I’d recommend getting a physical copy once/if you find it useful. It’s been a really great help in getting over white page/DAW syndrome. Truly great and full of smart/useful gems.
Is this open source? I'd love to tweak it a bit, I wonder if it modulation can be automated somehow, so it can be kept in the background as it fiddles with patterns on its own and explores the musical landscape. Or add a save/load feature, for both songs and patterns...
Would be great as an inspiration tool if it would make a little visualisation of the notes/accent/slides on a piano roll.
I can read the JSON meanwhile but just an idea.
It's a bit of a hack that re-opens the app in an iframe in the background using an offline audio context.
I'll come back to it at some point and make the export pick up the knob positions but I don't have time right now.
peterldowns•6mo ago
Uncaught TypeError: a.frequency.cancelAndHoldAtTime is not a function
Pretty fun in Chrome!
oasisaimlessly•6mo ago