Invented by Tadao Kikumoto for the Roland corporations, who also invented the TR-909 drum machine. Roland is still one of the largest manufacturers of electronic instruments, with products ranging from synths, electric organs, workstations, and recorded sample libraries.

TB stands for Transistor Bass. It was marketed to the pop music market to emulate a bass guitar. The 303 failed rather miserably at this task, as it sounds very little like a bass guitar, is notoriously difficult to program, and suffers from eccentric behavior when its batteries are low or it is disconnected from a power source for any period of time. It sold very poorly when it was released in 1982, and was taken off of the market only a year later, with only 20,000 units having been manufactured. 303s were available for very little money in the years that followed, and were stumbled upon by musicians who would realize this instrument’s full potential.

The 303 is a synthesizer and sequencer, which arranges notes and effects. It starts with a basic sawtooth or wave oscillator. It is programmed by a small set of buttons representing a possible 16 steps, with part of the row resembling a miniature keyboard for programming note pitches. Additionally knobs allowed for shaping the bass sounds by changing the octave, envelope, and filter. It is a fairly counter-intuitive machine to program, and often musicians would get results far different from their intentions when programming the machine. To make matters worse, when the 303 was originally shipped to US stores in the early 80s, Roland had not yet printed English manuals, so purchasers were greeted by a Japanese booklet when they opened the box. Some pop groups attempted to record songs with the 303 when programmed in the fashion taught in it’s later-released English manual, to very limited success. It just didn’t sound like a Bass.

One of the first groups to coax and then record a non-traditional bass sound out of the 303 was 80s breakdance music outfit Newcleus. Here is their track “Jam On It”, released in 1984 – 2 years after the release of the TB-303.

The 303 was still looking for its true home, and it would be another 3 years before it niche would be discovered. In 1987, Chicago house music group Phuture recorded a track that involved tweaking all of the sound control knobs on the 303 to produce a very alien sounding squelchy noise. The track entitled “Acid Trax” would define a new, distinct sub-genre of house music, appropriately entitled Acid House.

Acid House built a lot of steam in Great Britain in correspondence to the Rave movement that was starting to become a national phenomenon in England. A multitude of British electronic music outfits began embracing the 303 as part of their arsenal of instruments. Here is an example of a track recorded by British Acid House outfit 808 State as recorded in 1988, entitled Flow Coma.

The first instance of a song featuring the 303 making into the pop music charts was KLF’s “What Time Is Love” in 1990. Listen to the 303’s Acid-y bassline in the background of this song.

Other prominent musicians to utilize the 303 sound in the early 90s include Richie Hawtin (aka Plastikman), Moby, and Massive Attack.

Roland released an updated version of the 303 in the mid 90s, attempting to ride the boom of electronic music popularity world-wide. The new version was called the MC-303 Groovebox. It was a big hit, and meshed well with other equipment on the market at the time. Original 303s used analog circuitry for its sounds, whereas the new MC-303 used digital samples of 303 noises as it’s sound source. Purists preferred the original, and TB-303s in the late 90s were selling for over $1000, as opposed to their $200 retail sticker in 1982. In 1997, UK breakbeat band The Prodigy released their album The Fat Of The Land, with many songs including distorted 303 basslines. This became the first album including 303 sounds to reach number 1 in the US as well as the UK. Here is Smack My Bitch Up. Notice the prominent, dirty-sounding 303 synth line. The Prodigy were signed on Madonna’s Maverick label, and Madonna herself recorded songs with 303 sounds on her album Ray of Light.

In 1998 Swedish company Propellerheads Software released a piece of software that emulated very closely the 303, allowing people without access to the hardware versions of the machine. The software, called ReBirth, also emulated a 2 of Roland’s drum machines, the TR 808 and 909. This resulted in musicians being able to compose entire acid house songs on their computer screens. Propellerheads later released a follow up piece of software called Reason, that put a pantheon of emulated studio equipment on a computer user’s screen. This ‘professional studio software’ meshed perfectly with the 303-emulating program ReBirth via a software link calle ReWire, which has become an industry standard for linking sound software. Prominent musicians who have used or now use Reason for their recordings include The Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails, Aphex Twin, and The Prodigy.

How interesting that a piece of music hardware invented 25 years ago is now resurrected in digital form.

To end the segment today, here is a Psy-Trance track by Infected Mushroom that prominently features a 303 bassline. It’s called Bust A Move.