What a blast from the past! Thanks for that. I remember Jeskola Buzz. It was a big part of my teenage years. The ethos of building things on top of an old, clunky, but otherwise amazing platform. People really created some amazing synthesizers for it.
The fun thing was the Roland Sync. You could sync up all the TB-303, TB-909 and all the others with a 5-pole DIN cable. The sync was badly implemented. It lagged, it had latency.
However!
As soon as you cabled all together their imperfections added up and they started to groove like nothing that has been heard before.
The UI for loopmaster looks really good. The color scheme is really pleasing to look at and it is easy to jump right in and start editing stuff.
I've owned a bunch of different synthesizers and used a bunch of DAWs over the years and it was clear to me where I needed to make my edits to affect the signal chain.
We do real-time client-side audio processing in Emurse, and there were definitely a bunch of challenges to overcome there, so it would be interesting to hear more about what went into building the tool.
TB-303 owner here. If my TB-303 sounded this bad I'd set fire to it ;-)
Really this is just an implementation of a basic oscillator, filter and envelope. No harm in that all and it's more than I could manage - it's fun and nice, but it's nothing like a 303. "Building an acid synth" would be fairer.
The accent and glide are core components of the sound, as is the really quite unique sequencer control - from the strange bendy growls to the classic acid bark the accent brings out. Would have been nice to see a deeper dive into why that is and why it's different from implementing a normal portamento-style glide as many other synths do, like the SH-101 - which cannot sound that close to a 303 due to that glide. Well it's also got a different oscillator and filter, with no accent either, but I don't want that to ruin the story ;-)
Without having the source to the WASM diodeLadder(), the following is just a guess: they implemented it exactly like every other "Diode Ladder" on GitHub, rather than a true SPICE simulation. Some evidence for that: the CPU usage would explode.
My first real soldering project (aside from just making cables) was a x0xb0x TB-303 clone. I somehow built it with a $10 radioshack iron and nail-clippers as flush cutters in an un-air conditioned Boston studio apartment over a summer. Probably not the first deep electronics project, but somehow it worked!
"If you've ever heard the word "acid" in a song, it's probably a reference to the sound of the TB-303"
Ummmm, what? If you've heard the word "acid" in a song, it was definitely not a reference to the 303 and definitely the other use of "acid" like its use on the dancefloor. If you've heard someone describe a song as "acid", maybe it could be a reference to the 303.
Even though I'm not that familiar with the synth world, I always found it a really interesting field. Websites like this that helps me exploring and learning are amazing :)
It's interesting I briefly thought about getting into "live coding" or Strudel (or Sonic Pi), this kind of thing where you write code to produce music
But as a non-music person and developer I'd rather use an interface like Ableton where you see separate tracks/times line up kind of thing... but aside from that I ended up just getting a music subscription service that you can use in your YT videos which is what I was after.
Everything is a time sink it seems, gotta choose where you put your time into if 40 hrs of your life is taken up by day job already.
Max/MSP (or Pure Data) ended up being a good middle ground for me. With that said, it's easy to get lost in the coding and forget to make music, if that is the ultimate goal. I also found that more complex patches trend towards approximating features of a DAW, at which point the downsides (single-core, no timeline) make the whole undertaking a bit questionable.
I spent about a month developing a custom UI and comprehensive control environment for my modular only to immediately abandon it and return to Ableton.
I was expecting a hardware project, not software. I don't have a real TB-303, just the Behringer clone, and it'd be fun to build something from scratch that sounds similar.
That aside, I've been wanting to play with this kind of music making via code, this is a useful write-up.
"...in software" should have been appended to the title.
Back in the day, I was quite heavy into the x0xb0x. (https://www.ladyada.net/make/x0xb0x/) It's an open hardware 303 clone by Ladyada and was designed to use as many of the original 303 components as possible. According to those who own both, the sounds are essentially identical. (But the x0x is much easier to use.)
Somewhere in 2006, I was too late the to party to snag one of the original kits, but a little cottage industry formed on the x0xb0x forums to support the community of people who wanted to build and mod their own. Adafruit provided the PCBs, the common components came from DigiKey and Mouser, the rarer components from eBay or other forum members.
I ended up buying enough components to build six, but only ended up building three. The first one I kept, the other two I sold. I recouped my cost with those so I also ended up selling the rest of the components later as my interest in building them waned. I should have held onto those and built the rest with my kids when they got older, since even the replacement components are hard to come by these days and they are still a fun project to build.
The roomy case and big PCB make it very nice for modding. I put almost every documented mod there is in mine. The whole left and right side of the Pactec case is covered in knobs and switches. Added an LFO too that can do FM/AM.
I remember playing with Rebirth in the late '90s and then actually finding a real, TB-303, albeit with a bunch of drawn on crap. But it was very functional. Keeping it in a box for my daughter. She will either think it's cool or sell it after I'm gone. If she sells it, hopefully she gets some decent coin.
I'm kinda tempted to give it to my neighbor's son though. He knows about all this stuff and loves it. He'd appreciate it more. He’d also love my Roland D-50. He also comes by the garage to help out with stuff. Like the son I never had.
My daughter, though, does not appreciate this tech stuff whatsoever. Calls my gear room the ‘junk room’ .
You could always invite him over to check it out, just to see how he reacts to it, and if he's interested more in the tech aspect or the music aspect. Due to the increased rarity of the device, you'd probably want to find out if he would actually use the device, or try taking it apart to see how it works. I'm not sure how old your daughter is, but you could try asking her if she would be upset if you allowed the neighbor to play with the device, just to avoid any ill feelings.
It sounds like you've got some great options either way. I wish I had a neighbor growing up that had cool music gear (although I did get to grow up with a dad that got me into computers before I could read, so that definitely built my love for technology). Sounds like you're the kind of dad more kids these days need in their lives.
37 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 50.2 ms ] threadBack in my day of the demoscene and Buzz...
demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2kl-CW9snU
However!
As soon as you cabled all together their imperfections added up and they started to groove like nothing that has been heard before.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/@MoritzKlein0/
sonic potions has an analysis of the cpu timings here https://sonic-potions.com/Documentation/Analysis_of_the_D650...
Theres also some nice articles about the diode ladder filter in the 303, similar to the one in the vcs3 https://www.timstinchcombe.co.uk/index.php?pge=diode2
I'm just joshing - it's very cool!
edit: This is, without a doubt, the best soft-synth emulation I know of these days and it's a hell of a lot of fun: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/pure-acid/id1481283602
No words can describe the feeling of original Yamaha cs-80.
It is very unfortunate as there is no true alternative to a 80kg, age issues ridden, ultra expensive antique device.
I've owned a bunch of different synthesizers and used a bunch of DAWs over the years and it was clear to me where I needed to make my edits to affect the signal chain.
We do real-time client-side audio processing in Emurse, and there were definitely a bunch of challenges to overcome there, so it would be interesting to hear more about what went into building the tool.
Really this is just an implementation of a basic oscillator, filter and envelope. No harm in that all and it's more than I could manage - it's fun and nice, but it's nothing like a 303. "Building an acid synth" would be fairer.
The accent and glide are core components of the sound, as is the really quite unique sequencer control - from the strange bendy growls to the classic acid bark the accent brings out. Would have been nice to see a deeper dive into why that is and why it's different from implementing a normal portamento-style glide as many other synths do, like the SH-101 - which cannot sound that close to a 303 due to that glide. Well it's also got a different oscillator and filter, with no accent either, but I don't want that to ruin the story ;-)
Without having the source to the WASM diodeLadder(), the following is just a guess: they implemented it exactly like every other "Diode Ladder" on GitHub, rather than a true SPICE simulation. Some evidence for that: the CPU usage would explode.
Ummmm, what? If you've heard the word "acid" in a song, it was definitely not a reference to the 303 and definitely the other use of "acid" like its use on the dancefloor. If you've heard someone describe a song as "acid", maybe it could be a reference to the 303.
But as a non-music person and developer I'd rather use an interface like Ableton where you see separate tracks/times line up kind of thing... but aside from that I ended up just getting a music subscription service that you can use in your YT videos which is what I was after.
Everything is a time sink it seems, gotta choose where you put your time into if 40 hrs of your life is taken up by day job already.
I spent about a month developing a custom UI and comprehensive control environment for my modular only to immediately abandon it and return to Ableton.
Max for Live, on the other hand...
okay it's just a tracker but it can use VST.
That aside, I've been wanting to play with this kind of music making via code, this is a useful write-up.
Back in the day, I was quite heavy into the x0xb0x. (https://www.ladyada.net/make/x0xb0x/) It's an open hardware 303 clone by Ladyada and was designed to use as many of the original 303 components as possible. According to those who own both, the sounds are essentially identical. (But the x0x is much easier to use.)
Somewhere in 2006, I was too late the to party to snag one of the original kits, but a little cottage industry formed on the x0xb0x forums to support the community of people who wanted to build and mod their own. Adafruit provided the PCBs, the common components came from DigiKey and Mouser, the rarer components from eBay or other forum members.
I ended up buying enough components to build six, but only ended up building three. The first one I kept, the other two I sold. I recouped my cost with those so I also ended up selling the rest of the components later as my interest in building them waned. I should have held onto those and built the rest with my kids when they got older, since even the replacement components are hard to come by these days and they are still a fun project to build.
I'm kinda tempted to give it to my neighbor's son though. He knows about all this stuff and loves it. He'd appreciate it more. He’d also love my Roland D-50. He also comes by the garage to help out with stuff. Like the son I never had.
My daughter, though, does not appreciate this tech stuff whatsoever. Calls my gear room the ‘junk room’ .
It sounds like you've got some great options either way. I wish I had a neighbor growing up that had cool music gear (although I did get to grow up with a dad that got me into computers before I could read, so that definitely built my love for technology). Sounds like you're the kind of dad more kids these days need in their lives.
https://data.dynareg.se/breadandbutter/D05.html