the roland tb-303
303 software versions
Fancy getting some of that Roland Bassline, filter-squelch in your tracks? Help is available at numerous price points. You simply don’t have to part with thousands of pounds for an ageing second hand 303, to include that spirit in your productions…
The original innovators
Roland had been asked to reproduce the original TB-303 for many years, and they responded with the amazingly cool TB-03. Residing in their popular Boutique form, the original 303 form factor lends itself perfectly to the Boutique dimensions. It’s more or less the same, but now with added connectivity, like USB for audio and MIDI, a cool little kick stand, and an internal speaker, should you want to take it on the move. Roland also improved the sequencer programming, while maintaining a traditional sequencer mode for the original devotees. Finally, they added overdrive, making it sound incredibly familiar from source, along with a backend delay.
The great news for us desktop-devotees is that this Boutique brilliance now establishes itself as part of the Roland Cloud, allowing access to an improved sequencer mode, which makes exceptionally light work of programming all those 303-style curios, such as accent and slide. Accessing these programmable stepelements is simplicity itself, thanks to the included elegant editor, which drops open beneath the main sequencer keyboard. This means it’s incredibly easy to see what you’re doing, at the step level. You never have to scroll through individual steps in the same way again. Moreover, it sounds exceptional; Roland’s take on fashioning their vintage instruments in software is masterful. As a rule, they like to model their synth-engines to sound like the desired device, before suffering at the hands of component degradation over time. If you were in a position to line up more than one original 303, you would find that they all sound subtlety different, and Roland explore this territory by modelling the sound on a cross-section of devices, ensuring that the software sounds as you would effectively like it to.