tips for creating acid lines in a piano roll?

[Rein]

yeah if you want 303 you've got to get the real thing i guess; or one of those 'replicas'. they're close enough from what i've heard.

nevertheless you can get some interesting 'acid like' sounds from other machines. actually all mono synths with nice screaming filters will do the trick.

but if you want to go the software route; in ableton you can use the analog for this kind of stuff. set up a saw / square wave as osc. then add a tiny, tiny amount of white noise for the dirt. make the synth monophonic, and set it to legato. then glide to taste. a 24db low pass filter (18db would be better but can't be done with the analog in ableton is i recall correctly). then some filter envelope, play around with the settings on it.

what i really like to do is setup 2 oscs and send them both to different filters (osc 1 to filter 1 and osc 2 to filter 2). then configure one with a normal low pass filter. and the other one for some screaming sounds, use a formant filter, f6 or f12. lower the amp on the 'screamer'

to get the right sound you might want to use some plugs after the analog synth. try chaining a bunch of distorters after each other, with mild settings. this way you can get more dynamic results and make it less dull and digital sounding. for example, use a saturator, vinyl distortion and overdrive chained...

then it's always nice to do some poly rhythmic or whatever it's called, just set the loop length of the piano roll to something like 6 or 14 steps and rock on

edit: wtf, i read your question wrong... but maybe somebody will enjoy this info

[steevio]

The KLF (also known as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords and other names) were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

that's funny, i consider the KLF as classic acid house. just browse their early singles, almost all of which are categorized as "house" and "acid". the same wikipedia article doesn't arrive at any conclusion over the term "acid house" etymology or definition. the 303 is one component of this, but there are some other hardwares that contributed to the acid house sound. and yes there are many "acid house singles" from around 87-90 that did not have a squeeling 303 in them. acid house was a term at that time which referred to alot of house music, only later did a stereotype form around the 303 as the "acid" part of acid house.

i'm not arguing, i find this type of conversation very interesting as it shows the elasticity of certain terminologies in EDM.

i'm not arguing either really, and you're right about the elasicity, but i was very involved in the UK acid techno movement and i know all the guys well and the whole point of acid techno was that it was made on 303s, thats why it was called that. every single artist had a 909 and a 303 without exception. they werent that rare back then, at one point i had 3 of them. (only one now)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_techno

the loose term 'acid house' was as you say given to a whole genre of music in which there would have been lots of music that didnt involve 303's but that generic term was used as loosely by the media as some people these days use the term 'minimal' . I can find very little music these days that is marketted as minimal that is actually minimal in any way.

ask anyone involved in the scene back then and they'll tell you that acid = 303.

if it doesnt have a 303 its not really acid, its just house or techno. you can make squelchy noises on any synth with a resonant filter, so how are they acid lines ? theyre just synth lines/riffs

[5meohd]

darn.. I thought this kind of question wouldn't get this reaction here!! or did I ?

I've got the synth worked out to my taste... I was getting at what steevio touched on.. about the envelope/glide happening at the end of the note trigger.. I was wondering if there were a similar trick with a software sequencer.. I've tried setting a knob to control Live's analog's filter env>velocity and it def. makes for interesting effect, I'm just a 303 virgin so I don't know what I'm looking for.

Also.. according to sound on sound the filter on the 303 isn't 18dB its 24dB.

I guess I'm more or less interested in some tips on glide time and how far to overlap my notes... the poly rhythm tip is useful! wasn't sure if the 303 could do that or not!

I might as well admit that I'm really getting into Joy O and Boddika.. that grimey house stuffs. I'm not convinced that their acid is from a tb yet I'm perfectly triggered by there recent jamz.

thanks!

[steevio]

haha 5meohd sorry mate, its just the silver box was my life for 3 or 4 years, so i'm particularly opinionated on it, i know its naughty.

tbh why dont you just use a 303 emulation, if you want that sound you've got it in ten seconds.
its never going to breath like a real analogue machine, but they arent bad.

the polyrhythm riff thing was virtually invented by the 303, its really easy to do it on the 303.
i quite frequently used 3/4, 5/8, and 7/8 patterns one on each of my three 303s. but its edging into trance territory, there was an acid techno/trance genre that thrived on that in the mid 1990s, really hypnotic tripped out stuff.

the kings of the polyrhythmic 303 thing were Hardfloor.

[nakoradiomies]

little offtopic..but i feel this quite funny to read this same bloody "is it acid without 303" thing..and the year is 2012

yes it seems that acid never dies away..

[Barfunkel]

yeah if you want 303 you've got to get the real thing i guess; or one of those 'replicas'. they're close enough from what i've heard.

I got a X0xb0x which supposedly has the exact same circuits as a real 303. Yet, I'm not a 100% satisfied with it, it doesn't sound exactly like the 303's I hear on records.

Then again, even 303's don't sound the same. Old, cheap components age differently, so every 303 sounds a bit different now.

[lem]

yeah if you want 303 you've got to get the real thing i guess; or one of those 'replicas'. they're close enough from what i've heard.

I got a X0xb0x which supposedly has the exact same circuits as a real 303. Yet, I'm not a 100% satisfied with it, it doesn't sound exactly like the 303's I hear on records.

Then again, even 303's don't sound the same. Old, cheap components age differently, so every 303 sounds a bit different now.

I have never used a real 303 but whenever i have used a plugin, i found that inserting a distortion plugin made it sound much more authentic....
Since, i have thought that was how it was used in the 90's...maybe steevio could confirm that?

[oblioblioblio]

most components sounds differently even when new. Capacitors, transistors... everything, they all vary a lot from component to component.

I was listening to old Plastikman Sheet One stuff yesterday, Richie sure did get that 303 to sing!

I'm not actually that interested in emulating a 303 but it left a big impact on musical history and surely there is something to plunder. Maybe attention to detail with tweaked out sequencing. Luckily I have analogue sequencers that have lots of 303 like functions.

I don't know if I would use a distortion on it... it sounds fantastic clean. Deep square with no resonance is very unique.