Today's Lost in Music on the Breakfast Show had a bit of a twist. Instead of focusing on a genre, theme or decade of music, tom focused on the sound of the Roland TB303 bassline synthesizer for international 303 appreciation day (the 30th of March).
The TB303 is by now a legendary instrument as it is responsible for the sound behind some of the biggest dance music records in history and has been used widely in pop music since its release in 1982 This wasn’t always the case though.
The TB303 was originally designed to replicate the sound of bass guitar so that it could replace bass players in a band. It turned out that it did a pretty terrible job of imitating a bass guitar though and pretty quickly these machines ended up stocking the shelves in second hand shops all over the world.
Despite it's shortcomings at replicating a bass guitar, the 303 has a unique sound character of its own. This was first put to use on record by Indian musician Charanjit Singh who is credited as the first person to combine a 303 with electronic beats in 1982, predating the birth of the genre Acid House, that would make the 303 world famous, by 5 years.
Acid House arrived though when a TB303 ended up in the hands of some boundary pushing young kids in Chicago who had a group called Phuture. They realized that the 303 could make a pretty interesting and quite addictive squelching sound if you pushed it to its limits and in doing so they created what is widely understood to be the first acid house tune Acid Tracks.
in 1988 a DJ called A Guy Called Gerald used the TB303 to amazing effect in creating Voodoo Ray, a track which is considered one of the most popular and influential Acid House tunes and which introduced the Acid House sound to the masses in the UK.
From its initial rejection as an instrument that doesn't do what it supposed to do, through its adoption as the source sound of one of dance music's most influential genres, The TB303 went on to be used widely by producers of Pop Music over the years. It can be heard in classic pop hits such as Orange Juice's 'Rip it Up And Start Again,' and modern pop music by the likes of Tame Impala in their track 'Breath Deeper' and Aaliyah in her track 'Try Again'.
We hope you enjoyed this look back at the legacy of this peculiar and influential instrument on this week's 'Lost In music'.