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TB-303 Give-Aways from Propellerheads and d-lusion
slashflood writes "Good news for those of you who are into music synthesizers: Propellerheads has opened its Rebirth Museum and gives away the 'revolutionary' software simulation of the classic Roland TB-303. Interestingly, that happened just a day after the small German company d-lusion released another 'legendary' TB-303 simulator called Rubberduck as a free give-away."
The refill is mostly to appease registered Mac users who were expecting Rebirth to be ported to OSX.
Rebirth itself has been released for free. Just register at the museum site and then go to downloads. There's a torrent, ffs, use that.
--- Do you believe in the day?
yeah the mods are definetly a cool aspect of the program, some of them are frickin amazing. my favorite (and actually the reason I actually got the software) was the Pitch Black mod that came with the software. who needs those pesky 808 and 909s..
the mod aspect of rebirth is probably the best (and only) good use of skinning that I've encountered over the years (or have a recollection of now) - unlike most other skinnable software that are only eyecandy and add nothing to the software - the "skins" rebirth have actually added real value to the software.
"is it too much to ask that closed source, Windows-only software be labelled as such in the story?"
Thats a good point.
(and the mac version is MacOS9)
"but is slashdot going to put every piece of Windows-only closed source freeware on the front page?"
rebirth in the electronic music scene is somewhat akeen to Doom in the gaming scene - this perticular software had an enormous effect both from a user interface and technological aspect on the shape of the computer virtual instrument sceene that developped.
"In theory, this kind of software could enable a hundred Vince Clarkes - in practice I don't see any. Any suggestions?"
develop ReClark. that might work.
I don't know ... back in the 90s shareware days i thought this was completely normal.
... but nowadays it is all about konquering the (business) desktop and adapting the same makes-me-yawn language as corporations. Takes some fun out of computing.
Rubberduck was freaky underground software, i used it from versions on that looked like Windows3.1. It was the software to produce the cheapest and best sounding bass; as a bedroom producer you could finally laugh about the people that rent studios or spend huge money on gear and think that is half of the music already done. It started just then.
Today even GNU stuff looks polished. I think this is boring. I want announcements like "KDE new release with bomb shit doorbending menus comin atcha like cleopatra" or "new version of gnumeric -- coded on bad LSD" or whatever
There was a version of Rebirth for Linux called Reborn that looked identical and sounded a little better.
The developers had to stop distributing it after the Propellerheads sued them.
It was free for download, but the source was never released.
I wonder if the Propellerheads would let them distribute it now?
Damn straight. You'd think we'd see heaps more music technology articles on here given both music and tech are traditionally "nerdy" pursuits. I'd love to hear more about the latest synthesis stuff, cool effects, home recording without talking about Apple etc. Let's petition for a dedicated music section! :-)
Check out this post from musicthing.
"The app installer itself is only 16 MB, ReBirth uses a copy protection scheme which involves a 128 MB data file on the CD. It's actually a nonsense file that contains just random data, but ReBirth won't boot without it. The rest of the CD isn't really necessary, but includes a Mac partition (which has roughly the same files including another instance of the 128 MB data file), and lastly there are 3 audio tracks that showcase ReBirth if you put it in a CD player."
Yes, but there is musical innovation happening with guitars. People are constantly doing new things with guitars.
Where as the 303 sound has totally stagnated.
The 303 is totally capable of making sounds other than the cliched "303 sound"; indeed I suspect that the 303 designers never expected users to turn the resonance up quite so high, to use the upper pitch range so much, to make those frequency sweeps, etc.
Remember the "TB" stands for "The Bass": they expected it to be used as a stand-in for a bass player. However, it just so happens to turn out that if you don't know what you're doing and you fiddle with a 303, you get stuff that approaches the "303 sound", and if you do know what you're doing you can make it sound very nice indeed (if still cliched) in no time at all.
But that doesn't mean people aren't using it (or its emulators) in innovative ways today. If you use a 303 in an innovative way, it won't have *that* sound, and most of us probably wouldn't recognise it as a 303.
Then again, *that* sound is cropping up in places you wouldn't expect it, which is in itself innovation.
"I Like You" from Morrissey's "You Are the Quarry" is an uptempo Smiths-y guitar driven song with a 303 twittering away halfway up the mix to fill up the sound and make it a bit more modern.
Super Furry Animals never cease to innovate, but they make frequent use off 303 (or similar noises). Try the current single "Lazer Beam" (from "Love Kraft").