Hidden · found in the search · Bass line

The TC-303

An acid bass line worked out from a classic bass line box's circuits: a saw or square wave, a diode filter, and the accents and slides that made acid.

Tempo
Swing
Volume
Audio—Page0%0 late

TC-303 bass line

P01Acid line

Age
Tuning
Cutoff
Reso
Env mod
Decay
Accent
Drive

Machines found

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  3. TC-303
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The others answer to their numbers in the search.

How to play it
  • Play starts the sequencer, and so does the space bar. A pattern chosen while it plays starts at the next bar.
  • Knobs turn when dragged up or down; hold Shift for small steps, double-click to put one back. With the keyboard: Tab to a knob, then the arrow keys. While the lab plays, a knob an LFO, a duck or the song moves turns with it, and a mark on its ring stays where you set it; a knob the song's lane holds is framed in green.
  • Undo: Ctrl+Z takes back the last change to the lab, a run of changes without a pause being one step, and Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y) puts it back; ↶ and ↷ on the rack's bar do the same. A right-click on a region, a note, a lane's point, a track's name or a channel gives what can be done to it. ? shows every key.
  • Parts: every machine has sixteen, A–P, each played from its own steps or from a piano roll; the letters under its name choose the one it plays and shows. Give it a name, and Save as new part copies it, steps, roll and all, to the first free part and goes on there, so a pattern you made is kept to use in the song. Solo lets only that machine be heard: with Patterns on, it loops the part you are writing.
  • Piano roll: Steps or Roll beside a machine's parts says how that part is written. In the roll, a double click on the grid puts a note there (with ✎, press and drag to draw one as long as the drag); press a note to choose it, drag it to move it or its end to lengthen it, double-click it away; with a note chosen, the arrow keys move it and Shift with them lengthens it. The grid is a quarter down to a thirty-second, or triplets; a clip is 1 to 512 bars, and in the song a region as long as its clip plays it through once. Velocities are under the notes, lanes for the machine's own knobs under those. Read MIDI takes a MIDI file's track (its controllers 74, 71, 1 and 72 become lanes, its pitch bends a Pitch bend lane), Save MIDI writes the clip out with its bend, and with Rec on, what you play while the lab runs is written in.
  • Pitch bend: every synth and the TC Sampler bends, every note sounding and every new one, as a keyboard's wheel does. Bend on its panel says how far, 1 to 24 semitones up and down (2 to start). A MIDI keyboard's wheel bends the machine touched last. In a roll, a Pitch bend lane bends it through the clip, the middle no bend; draw a swoop down for a hoover. An LFO on Pitch bend, at a small depth, is vibrato.
  • Sounds: the display over a synth's knobs is its bank. The arrows and the list choose a sound, which sets the knobs and leaves the patterns; a star means a knob has moved since. Save keeps the sound in your own bank, in this browser, and with the song: a mix you save carries it, and whoever opens the mix finds it in that synth's bank under This song's, to play and Keep among their own. Export and Open… take a sound as a file of its own (and open the originals' SysEx files); Share… puts it in the site's list for its synth, which every bank shows under The site's and the sounds page lists.
  • Step programs: beside a machine's parts, a list of programs to put into the part chosen (‹ › go through them; Undo puts the steps back): the lab's own, with the riffs and beats of the band's remix kits, yours, and the site's. Save steps… keeps yours in this browser, Export and Open… take them as a file, and Share… puts them on the step programs.
  • A TC-303: choose a step and play its note on the keyboard, or on the computer's keys A to K; the next step is chosen for you. Rest, Down, Up, Accent and Slide change the chosen step. In Play, the keyboard sounds the TC-303 while it is stopped and moves the running pattern to another key. Dice makes a new line. Engine chooses its voice: Circuit is a TB-303's circuits worked out sample by sample (its diode filter, its envelopes, its accent sweep that builds over accents in a row, its slide), Classic the lab's first, as a lab saved before played it. The circuit's Unit is one set of parts drawn from their tolerances, so that no two sound quite alike; Age ages them. Both are equally loud.
  • WAV records whole bars of what plays, from the start of a bar, and saves them as a WAV file that loops.
  • MIDI: in browsers that have it, the MIDI button lets a keyboard play the machines. Channel 10 strikes the drums by General MIDI's drum notes; the other channels play the machine touched last, and a TC-303 note struck hard is written with an accent. Controllers 74, 71, 1 and 72 turn the cutoff, resonance, envelope and decay of the machine touched last, where it has them, and the pitch wheel bends it; Start and Stop start and stop the lab.

Every sound is made in your browser as it plays, from the lab's own arithmetic, the band's remix kit and what you load yourself, which is never sent anywhere. What you make is kept in this browser and follows you from machine to machine. The band's studio had machines of these kinds from its first synthesizer in 1997 on; each machine's page says which, and what was made with them. Everything else is in the manual.

About the TC-303

How it is built

One voice, worked out sample by sample: an oscillator (a saw, or a square shaped from it), a four-pole diode filter computed at four times the rate, the filter's envelope and an accent sweep that builds over accents in a row, the slide's glide, and an overdrive after it. Cutoff, Reso, Env Mod, Decay, Accent and Drive turn it. Unit draws one set of its parts from their tolerances, so that no two units sound quite alike, and Age wears them. Engine chooses this circuit voice or the lab's first, Classic. A new lab plays Circuit; a lab saved before plays Classic, as it sounded.

How to use it

  1. Choose a step and play its note on the keyboard under the steps, or on the computer's keys A to K; the next step is chosen for you.
  2. Rest, Down, Up, Accent and Slide change the chosen step: a slid step glides into the next without striking it again.
  3. Press Play and turn Cutoff and Env Mod while it runs; in Play the keyboard moves the running line to another key.
  4. Dice writes a new line; the bank over its knobs chooses a sound.

In the studio

The band had bass line boxes of this kind from 1999: first a copy of the original, from December 2001 the original itself, stolen with the rest of the studio in January 2003, and after that one in software. The bassline of Unicorn R.I.P and the acid of Small Drops of Acid were made with them.

Everything else, the rack, the arranger, the mixer and saving your work, is in the lab's manual.