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| quote: | | You can replicate a 303 with just abut any bass sound if you add the right effects. Try finding a filter with autowah function and put it on a high feedback BP or formant setting with the autowah cutting down sharply. After that a good quality distortion or overdrive. Maybe a light metalizer and/or flanger and hey presto, you have a 303 sound you can call your own. |
the principle is easy but in practice it is very difficult to replicate the sound of a 303 exactly. it should be easy because its just a single oscillator (saw/square) with a simple amp decay envelope, fed through to a saturated, resonant 3 pole filter. and thats it.
problems occur when trying to copy the specifics.
firstly, portmento on a tb-303 is somewhere between linear and exponential, is affected by amplitude envelope decay and only glides once. i.e. you cannot slide up and down and do so repeatedly.
secondly, the saw wave on a tb-303 is inverted and is very smooth. the square wave, if i recall correctly, isnt really a pure square (partly why every teebee clone has failed to accurate emulate the square wave). i think it is 2 rectified saws (???) or a rectified saw/square. dont quote me on that but its definitely not a pure square.
either way, the only synths i have managed to come close to emulating the square wave is an access virus b and (to some extent) linplug albino - both of which allow you to mix waveforms within themselves. for the virus i had to mix a saw and square using oscillator 2 and mix in a bit of pure sine on oscillator 1 just to emulate the characteristics of the single 303 square wave oscillator. the saw wave was easier to emulate and i got almost exactly there using a mix of mostly saw with a bit of sine on oscillator 2 then mixing it in with oscillator 1 set to pure sine.
thirdly, the filter is a heavily saturated 18 dB/octave 3 pole jobbie. so if you dont have a synth that can switch to a 3 pole filter, or emulate a 3 pole filter, then you are out of luck.
fourthly, replicating some of the quirks of analogue instruments is very difficult. 303s have unstable tuning. the pre filtered output distorts when you increase the volume above 8/10. the attack transient is non linear and it does not start isntantly (i.e. there is a short attack phase). additionally the built in 303 analogue distortion is difficult to emulate.
so far i have made a very close emulation of a 303 (without distortion) using an access virus b. this is probably the only synth i have used that is capable of doing so since it can:
1) mix oscillator waveforms
2) emulate a 3 pole filter (enable series 6 for a 4 pole and 2 pole filter connected in series, then turn filter balance to 3 or 9 o'clock)
3) saturate the filter in a variety of ways
4) allow you to add movement and randomness to the sound with its mod matrix which helps when trying to recreate instable tuning to make it seem more analogue
the only thing that cannot be done is a perfect emulation of the 303 portmento behaviour, since the virus doesnt have very extensive portmento editing features. and personally speaking, the attack transient on the 303, which i have never been able to get right. despite all my attempts at recursively modulating both amp/filter envelopes.
additionally, you will never truly be able to replicate the programming method of a 303 without using a synth that has a step sequencer, and even if you did have that, it probably wouldnt be able to emulate portmento slides and accents properly. you cant do the step sequencer on the virus but you can build slides and accents - you just need to use 3 separate patches for each and swap between them in multimode (pain in the arse).
either way, this is my best attempt:
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(note: its the second sound in. apologies if the tonal balance is off on all the sounds - since moving to dublin i no longer have monitors)
and it is still a little bit off. as a side note, alot of the lead instrument sounds in psytrance are based on 303 sounds - this example is part of the melody in the fatali tune: city of god [alchemy records]. alot of the squelchy sounds you can hear in LSD, or Silicon Sound or half of Space Cat's tunes are also usually from a 303. amazing how many different types of sounds you can get from an old monophonic synth.
my square wave emulation is not as good and i dont want to put it out yet because its a dead giveaway. audiorealism bassline is still the most accurate digital recreation of a 303 to my ears, both in terms of its saw and square. although the saw is closer than the square. the filter isnt quite right yet but heres hoping the AR guys nail it in a future update.
the bottomline is that creating 303 sounds on a real 303 is laughably easy - it really is a case of fumbling the cutoff and resonance pots and pressing record.
recreating 303 type sounds on digital instruments varies from difficult to impossible depending on the digital synth you use. you can make half arsed 303 type sounds on alot of synths that can generate a saw or a square wave but they only sound like a 303 up until you actually listen to it next to a real 303. then you realise its miles off. its the same deal with supersaws. you think its easy to make them on synths other than a JP and they do sound supersaw'ish. until you size yours up next to the real thing and realise they sound nothing like each other.
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