Why the fuck did I buy this garbage?
In 1982 I was using a CSQ-100 with my SH-1. It would hold 100 notes until you turned it off, so when I saw an advert that Roland was bringing out a box that would keep the data it was very exciting to think about pre-programming live shows. No more tapping in the notes before each song. And it used batteries!
I bought a TB-303 just for that reason. I didn’t think about it being a bass instrument but good that it made a noise at all. I made a pre-order and as soon as it was released I went sailing over to the local guitar shop in Sydney and paid what was a fairly meaty price for one of the first shipment. Like most people I knew I usually bought second hand but we could still look at pictures and make the occasional splurge on something. Roland stuff was pretty quick to arrive in Sydney – they had a local branch and all. Didn’t inspect it at the shop, I just brought it home and started to figure it out.
I think on the second day I realised that it wasn’t that I was stupid, it was just the most unfortunate interface to create music ever conceived. For people who can now afford multiple sequencers and have a choice of working method, sure it’s cute, but if this was all you could afford for months you were sorely tempted to murder whoever devised this heinous thing. And the noise it made ranged from elephant fart to mock tuba.
Just like everybody else would end up doing I soon started tapping in mad combinations of notes to make burbles and squawks – some of which I recorded on cassette and can be heard on an old album I made called Eighties Cheesecake. That was fun for a little while but I was pretty heartbroken. If only I’d kept at it I could have claimed to have invented acid house in 1982* But instead I mostly went back to the CSQ-100, and waited for the MC-202 Microcomposer to arrive – which made up for everything by being utterly fantastic.
I just used the MC-202 for everything. The 303 sat around the studio for a while until I pointedly gave it to Robert Racic for free. Probably sold it for enormous profit, more fool me. Anyway you can now get a butt ugly Behringer clone in translucent lime green, and it’s still utter utter utter SHIT.
* In fact Charanjit Singh was apparently the first to record the TB303, and I was just after. But all that is moot, as that bleepy sound everyone emulates was actually first made on a 202.
Hear It In Action
You are hearing the TB303, TR808, KORG MS20, Casiotone through a Big Muff pedal and tapes. Recorded in 1982.